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Peponi. Theorizing The Chorus in Greece in Choruses, Ancient and Modern, PDF
Peponi. Theorizing The Chorus in Greece in Choruses, Ancient and Modern, PDF
Despite its uncertain etymology, the Greek word for chorus, choros (å!æ"#),
appears to have quite clear semantics. In some of its earliest attested usages,
especially in Homeric poetry, the word denotes either public areas designated
for dance or the dancing activity itself, the latter usually performed by a group.
In some cases the two meanings are hard to distinguish, the communal space
for dance and the dance itself appearing to be culturally, and thus notionally,
interdependent.1 The cultural importance of public areas demarcated for
dance is reflected in the frequent early poetic use of the compound adjective
euru-choros, which is usually attributed to whole cities and understood ori-
ginally to mean ‘having spacious dancing-places’.2
Certainly, the best-known meaning of choros is that of a dancing and
singing group. This semantic nuance, which is prevalent in the classical period
and thereafter, is often implicit in early usages of the word, but it is also made
explicit in archaic compositions such as the Shield—attributed to Hesiod in
antiquity—where performing choruses (choroi, in plural) are described as
participating in a wedding procession.3 Although descriptions of choral activ-
ity where either the kinetic or the vocal component is singled out occur in
several Greek texts, it is clear from our sources that, for the most part, choroi
performed a combination of both components in various forms. Both poetic
and philosophical evidence indicates that in choral practices the alliance of
body and voice was considered essential to the group’s overall coordination,
even in cases where the performance seemed to require a distribution of the
kinetic and the vocal action between its members.4
1
See, e.g., Il. 3.393; Od. 6.157, 12.4. See also Chantraine (1999: s.v. å!æ"#) for both the
semantics and the uncertain etymology of the word.
2
Il. 23.299; Od. 4. 635; 11.265; Hes. Fr. 37.17 MW.
3
[Hes.] Sc. 277.
4
For choreia as the whole of vocal and kinetic activity, see, e.g., Pl. Leg. 654a–655a; 816a–b;
Pratinas PMG 708; Ar. Ran. 241–249.
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16 Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
Theorizing designates here processes of conceptualizing, of suggesting and
shaping perceptions and interpretations about a given phenomenon. More
specifically, this chapter aims at exploring ancient perceptions about Greek
choreia, the combined activity of song and dance, and will focus predomin-
antly on the way sources external to poetry meditated upon, or commented
on, things choral in antiquity. It is important to note, however, that it is
primarily thanks to extant archaic and classical Greek poetry—epic, lyric,
and dramatic—that we can have today a satisfactory idea both about the
way Greek choruses presented themselves and about the way choral perform-
ances were perceived and, in a few cases, evaluated.5 As poetry both reflected
and contributed to the formation of intellectual, emotional, and cultural
attitudes in archaic and classical Greece, the way in which the chorus, an
integral part of cultural life, was depicted within poetic discourse is a good
illustration of the overall way in which chorality was conceptualized over these
periods. On the other hand, the cultural importance of chorality (the term is
used here to denote the entire phenomenon of choral practices in Greece along
with the various principles and ideologies embedded in them) prompted
discourses outside poetry to engage with it. From evidence scattered in later
authors one receives the impression that things choral were part of political,
moral, and aesthetic discourses.6 A lost treatise On the Chorus, attributed to
Sophocles, indicates that issues pertaining to choreia might have already been
systematized in written form in the fifth century bc.7 This chapter discusses
important instances in which the Greek chorus and the broader phenomenon
of Greek chorality are theorized in surviving philosophical, interpretative, and
critical discourses in antiquity.
5
Il.18.590–606 and Hymn. Hom. Ap.156–64 are the most representative examples of the way
in which choreia was perceived and evaluated in early poetry.
6
See, e.g., Hdt. 5.67; 6.129; Thuc. 3.104.
7
Suda s.v. Sophoklês.
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8
About Plato’s attacks on poetry and ‘mass media’ culture, see Nehamas (1999).
9
See, e.g., Csapo and Slater (1995: 103–8).
10
Cra. 409c; Ion 534c.
11
Ap. 22a–b. See also Grg. 501e–502c.
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18 Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
‘through mimesis’.12 There have been various suggestions regarding the
meaning of the quite obscure expression ‘recital of the poet himself ’ as
opposed to ‘mimesis’, but for our purposes it is worth noting that the custom-
ary public performer of the dithyramb, the singing and dancing chorus, is
completely passed over in silence here.13 Even if Plato was thinking of
dithyrambic poems in which the characters of the narrative had no direct
speech, thus creating the impression that one was hearing the poet’s own
‘voice’, he nonetheless avoided any mention of the actual agent enacting the
poet’s ‘voice’—namely, the chorus. It is the singing voice of the dithyrambic
chorus that an audience would customarily hear in the Athenian festivals, not
that of the dithyrambic poet, a fact that certainly rendered the mimetic status
of the dithyrambic performance more complex than Plato was willing to
address in this fundamental passage for the theory of genres.
And, yet, Plato seems to have contemplated chorality with more perception
and more creatively than any other Greek thinker. It is less when Plato
analyses the existing culture of Athens and more when he conceives of
mousikê as deeply embedded in the structure of the cosmos that we find the
most interesting Platonic visions of choreia. The major instances come in the
tenth book of the Republic, in the myth of the soul in the Phaedrus, and,
finally, in his last work, the Laws. Whereas the first two are part of Plato’s
metaphysics, the last one is attached to his vision of an alternative model of
culture, where the chorus is given a central role.
Let us start with Plato’s choral metaphysics in the Republic. Close to the end
of the tenth book of the Republic Socrates narrates the story of Er, a man from
Pamphylia who, after apparently having been killed in battle and while lying
on the funeral pyre, was revived and enabled to tell the story of his after-life
journey. The relevant section of Er’s tale includes the description of the
universe and its motions, as seen when the souls reach a straight beam of
light that, stretched through the heaven and the earth, holds together the
entire cosmic sphere. It is from there that the spindle of Necessity is hung, by
which eight circles, depicted as the circular rims of eight hollow whorls, turn
round. A Siren stands on top of each of the eight revolving circles, each Siren
emitting a single sound (mian phônên), a single pitch (hena tonon), while
carried around with the revolution.14 From these sounds, eight in all, is made
the concord of a single harmonia. In addition, three Fates, sitting round about
at equal distances, sing to the harmonia of the Sirens, each one of them having
a different subject: Klotho sings ‘what is’, Lachesis ‘what has been’, Atropos
12
Resp. 394b–c. For implicit Platonic references to the New Dithyramb’s extravagant experi-
mentations in performance, see esp. Resp. 397a.
13
On this passage, see, e.g., Adam (1902: ad loc.); Koller (1954: 47); Vicaire (1960: 237–2);
Cross and Woozley (1964: 272–3); Else (1986: 29); Belfiore (1984: 141–2); Murray (1996: ad loc.);
Peponi (2013a).
14
Resp. 616b–617c.
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15
Resp. 617c–d. Much of the diction used here is based on the translation of the passage by
Barker (1984: ii. 56–8).
16
On this and other interesting aspects of Plato’s musicological endeavour, see Barker (1984:
ii. 56–9) and Petraki (2008).
17
In Hesiod, for instance (Theog. 39), the archetypal divine chorus of the nine Muses sing
while ‘fitting together their voices’, and, in one of the most revealing lines of Greek choral
criticism, the exquisite chorus of the Deliades is praised for their ‘beautifully fitted together song’
(Hymn. Hom. Ap. 164). See also Budelmann, Chapter 5, this volume.
18
Alcm. PMGF 1.96–100; PMGF 30; Pind. fr. 94b M.
19
See, e.g., Calame (1997: 35).
20
It should be noted that Plato’s Fates sound here like a transformation of yet another chorus,
that of the Muses in Hesiod Theog. 31–4.
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vocal routine while one modulates the kinetics of the other, is an extraordinary
piece of orchestration and choreography compared to what we otherwise
know from that era.21
Although both ancient commentators and modern scholars, preoccupied
with the broader issues raised by the Platonic text regarding astronomy,
mathematics, and musical science, consistently overlooked this aspect of Er’s
myth, Renaissance culture capitalized on it. The interludes for Girolamo
Bargagli’s La Pellegrina, presented in Florence in 1589 to celebrate the wed-
ding of Ferdinando I de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine, offered a musical
extravaganza that became an early landmark in the evolution of opera and
prominently featured elaborations on the Platonic choral fantasy.22
While the stagecraft of Plato’s celestial music in the Republic seems like a
twist on the rich choral imagery to be found in Greek poetic texts, a different
model of choreia is dreamt up in the Phaedrus, in yet another myth or allegory,
that of the soul-chariot. The soul here is likened to a chariot attached to two
winged horses and driven by a charioteer.23 Whereas the gods’ chariots,
Socrates says, are equipped with two perfect horses, everyone else’s chariot is
yoked to one beautiful and good horse and to one ugly and unruly one, which
makes chariot driving particularly challenging and painful. Grouped into
eleven sections and led by eleven gods, all soul-chariots fly high in the air
while patrolling the heavens.24 In key moments of the Socratic narrative the
soul-chariots, thus divided, are designated either with the collective attribute
choros (chorus) or with the individual attribute choreutês (member of a
chorus).25 The souls of the gods, who operate as chorus leaders in Plato’s
vision, ‘take their stand on the high ridge of heaven, where its circular motion
carries them around as they stand while they gaze upon what is outside the
heaven’.26 It is in this extra-celestial realm that the Forms, the abstract and
immaterial archetypes of the physical word, exist. Among the other soul-
chariots only the ones who follow the god most closely can see the Forms,
Socrates says.27 Their charioteer, striving to balance the two horses, can raise
his head up and glance at the Forms while being carried around in the circular
21
Quite close to this model but not identical is the case of the Nereids and the Muses
lamenting in Od. 24.57–61. The choral metaphysics of the tenth book of the Republic is a
fully-fledged elaboration on the motions of the heavenly bodies (imaginatively addressing both
the visual and the acoustic) assimilated to choreia elsewhere in Plato. On these heavenly motions,
see esp. Timaeus (40c) and the most recent analysis by Kurke (2013) with further references and
bibliography.
22
For a detailed account on the Interludes for La Pellegrina and their contemporary recep-
tion, see Treadwell (2008); and cf. Savage, Chapter 7, this volume.
23
Phdr. 246a–b.
24
Phdr. 246c–e.
25
Phdr. 247a, 250b, 252d.
26
Phdr. 247b–c, trans. Nehamas and Woodruff (1995: 33).
27
Phdr. 248a.
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28
On theoria in this part of the Phaedrus, see Nightingale (2004: 157–68).
29
On the imagery of the Athenian dithyramb in the Phaedrus, see Belfiore (2006: esp. 205–6),
who also makes other interesting associations with the broader area of drama. The suggestion
made here, however, is that, even in cases where familiar choral imagery could be evoked in
this passage of the Phaedrus, there is always a defamiliarizing aspect that turns Plato’s
choral imaginary into a remarkable oddity.
30
Perhaps Hom. Il. 23.1–16 can be used as a remote parallel to the chariot-chorus in the
Phaedrus.
31
Symp. 210a–212a.
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22 Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
chorus is openly and extensively discussed as a constitutive cultural compon-
ent of Magnesia, the imaginary colony to be established in the south of Crete
under the control of Knossos. While the three interlocutors, the Cretan
Cleinias, Megillus from Lacedaemon, and the anonymous Athenian, converse
about the proper principles and institutions with which to organize a new
polis, a wide range of choral matters arises, with particular emphasis in books
2 and 7. For instance, a clear definition of choreia, not encountered in any
other extant source from antiquity, is given in the second book of the Laws.
Choreia, the Athenian says, is the whole of dance (orchêsis) and song (ôidê)
and one without chorus-training (achoreutos) is a person with no education.32
Choreia thus emerges as fundamental for the education of young people, an
idea not to be found in any other Platonic dialogue, even though issues
relevant to the musical education of the young do come up in other dia-
logues.33 The importance of choral training for the formation of what seems to
be the intersection of sensation and judgement is clearly articulated.34 What is
clearly suggested is a well-ordered cultural system founded on a Spartan-
inspired model of three choruses, to be applied across-the-board based on
age-class (children, those under 30 years old, those between 30 and 60).35
Unlike Plato’s Republic, which is preoccupied with the education of the
exclusive class of the guardians, the Laws embraces the whole of the commu-
nity and explores the ways in which the ‘correct’ musical education becomes
the founding principle of all-participatory cultural practices, with the chorus
at their core. Here it is the entire polis, in its most inclusive manifestation, that
sings and dances. ‘Every man and child, free and slave, female and male—
indeed the whole city’, the Athenian says, ‘should never cease chanting to (and
enchanting) the entire city, itself to itself, these things we have described,
which must in one way or another be continually changing, presenting variety
in every way, so that the singers will take insatiable desire and pleasure in their
hymns.’36
Do, then, the mimetic poetry and music expelled from the city of the
Republic gloriously return to the city of the Laws? One soon realizes that,
although the mimetic aspect of choral performance is explicitly acknowledged
and affirmed in the Laws, choral mimesis is to be practised and judged on
the basis of its essentially moral content. A principle of ‘correctness’ (orthotês)
32
Leg. 654a–b.
33
Resp. 386a–403c; Prt. 324d–328d. On issues of musical education in the Republic and in the
Laws, see Mouze (2005: 112–45, 222–42).
34
Leg. 653a–d; 655a–b; 657b; 659d.
35
Leg. 664c–d. On the three choruses, as well as on the fourth group, that of men over 60, see,
e.g., Morrow (1960: 315–18); Brisson and Pradeau (2007: 32–6); Panno (2007: 135–54); Calame
(2013).
36
Leg. 665c, trans. Pangle (1980: 46), with modifications.
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ARISTOTELIAN DIVERSIONS
37 38
Leg. 655c–660a. On this issue, see, most recently, Rutherford (2013b).
39
On the conceptualization of choral and social cohesion in the Laws, see especially Kurke
(2013).
40
Leg. 700–701b. On this issue, see Peponi (2013b).
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24 Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
Nonetheless, it is quite striking that in the Aristotelian quantitative div-
isions of tragedy every section of the play is defined in relation to the chorus’s
dramatic presence. Tragedy’s quantitative elements, Aristotle says, can be
listed as: prologue, episode, exodus, choral section (chorikon), the latter
appearing in its two versions, as the chorus’s processional entrance into the
theatre (parodos) and as choral action in the orchestra (stasimon).41 Further-
more, the prologue, Aristotle tells us, is the portion of tragedy that precedes the
choral entrance; an episode is an entire portion of tragedy between complete
choral odes; the exodus is the portion of tragedy that follows the final choral
ode.42 Is this description, then, a sign of a still-surviving perception about the
key role of the chorus in tragedy? Or is the chorus used here as a mere
technical marker, as a punctuation device in the sequence of dramatic action?
Whether this labelling of the parts of tragedy reflects Aristotle’s own taxo-
nomical pursuits or a fourth-century bc theatrical vernacular is not possible
to say, yet one would be justified in imagining that, in the early stages of
the evolution of the genre, at the end of the sixth century bc and the beginning
of the fifth, such quantitative divisions would have reflected opposite trends.
The chorus would have been the all-pervasive agent, its musical action
punctuated by the intervention of individual agents in the form of chorus-
leaders (exarchontes or choragoi), eventually to morph into dramatic actors
(hupokritai).43
Likewise, Aristotle’s qualitative approach to tragedy leaves open key ques-
tions regarding the role of the chorus. Certainly, the chorus is by implication
included in his famous definition of tragedy. ‘Tragedy is a representation of an
action which is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude’, Aristotle says,
‘in language which is garnished in various forms in the different parts’.44
Inasmuch as he defines garnished language as ‘language that has rhythm and
melody’, there is no question that Aristotle takes into account the chorus’s
lyrics as essential parts of the tragic genre. The reader of this section of the
Poetics will soon see that verbal style and song-and-music (lexis and melos) are
considered the media of tragic mimesis and are listed along with plot structure
(muthos), character (ethos), reasoning (dianoia), and spectacle (opsis), all six
of them designated by Aristotle as the qualitative elements of the genre.
The chorus, therefore, is clearly addressed in Aristotle’s Poetics, both as a
quantitative and as a qualitative constituent of the genre. If there is a problem
with Aristotle’s theoretical treatment of the chorus in the Poetics, it is to be
found in the inadequate way in which he touches on what should be
41
Poet. 1452b14–27.
42
The English translation here relies heavily on Halliwell (1987: 43–4), emphasis added.
43
On the evolution of the tragic genre from the exarchontes of the dithyramb, see Poet. 1449a.
On the origins of Greek tragedy, see, e.g., Pickard-Cambridge (1962: 60–131) and Nagy (1990:
384–413).
44
Poet. 1449b24–28, trans. Halliwell (1987: 37), emphasis added.
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45
Poet. 1456a25–32, trans. Halliwell (1987: 52).
46
The embolima are explicitly mentioned Poet. 1456a29–32. For an extensive discussion of
this broader issue, see Mastronarde (2010: 88–152).
47
Pol. 1341b40. On this issue, see Kraut (1997: 209). See also Ford’s extensive discussion of
music and katharsis in the Politics in Ford (2004).
48
On melopoiia as including both lyric song and music in the Poetics, see Halliwell (1986:
239–40). On the broader issue of pity and fear in the tragic chorus, see Visvardi (forthcoming).
49
On the quite problematic status of the chorus in the Poetics, see Halliwell (1986: 238–52;
1987: 153–4).
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Aristotle flourished seems to be quite certain. An under-explored area in
classical scholarship is the way in which chorality appears as a metaphor or
analogy in discussions and arguments not directly related to mousikê. In
Aristotle’s Politics, for instance, the chorus surfaces in handy examples used
to illustrate concepts such as those of political virtue or excessive individual
glamour. ‘The goodness of all the citizens is not one and the same’, Aristotle
says, ‘just as among the members of a chorus the skill of the head dancer is not
the same as that of the subordinate leader’.50 Elsewhere, a defence of the
institution of ostracism for citizens who become exceedingly powerful
prompts analogies from the realm of arts: ‘Nor yet will a trainer of choruses
allow a man who sings louder and more beautifully than the whole chorus to
be a member of it,’ Aristotle says.51
That Aristotle was well aware of the chorus’s cultural pervasiveness is
precisely what makes the lack of any explicit reference to the chorus in the
sections of the Politics that are expressly dedicated to mousikê even more
remarkable. What underlies this silence is a cultural vision that is located at the
other extreme from Plato’s last dialogue. As we saw earlier, the Laws pro-
pounds an all-encompassing and all-participatory civic choreia, transcending
gender, age, and class divisions. By contrast, Aristotle’s Politics seems to
advocate a polis where the pleasure of music is to be enjoyed by a musically
sensitive, yet generally non-performing, audience, with performance to be
handed over to people of lower standing.52 The surviving works of the fourth
century bc, then, leave us with two major philosophers struggling against an
over-theatrical musical culture that encourages what they conceive to be
vulgar pleasure. While the former looks for the antidote in a chorally hyper-
active city that sings and dances under the auspices of political and cultural
authorities, the latter strives for a complete separation between professional
performers and an audience of citizens, a separation that does not seem to
provide enough room for a vibrant and pivotal civic choreia.
P O S T - C LAS S I C A L M O M EN T S
Extant theoretical or critical thought about the chorus after the fourth century
bc is sparse. This is not to be attributed to a total eclipse of choral perform-
ances. On the contrary, a wide variety of literary sources, in both prose and
poetry, along with epigraphic material, indicate that choruses kept perform-
ing, in one form or another, all over the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman
50
Pol. 1277a12–13, trans. Rackham (1932: 189), slightly modified.
51
Pol. 1284b11–13, trans. Rackham (1932), slightly modified.
52
See esp. Pol. 1339a27–b10 and 1340b20–1341b33. On this issue, see also Peponi (2013b).
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53
For choral performances as described and discussed in post-classical times and especially in
the imperial period, see Bowie (2006: 61–92), who discusses issues of reception of the earlier
choral tradition in later authors and references to their contemporary choral practices. See also
Rutherford’s extensive discussion of the dithyramb and discourses about the genre at Rome in
Rutherford (2013a).
54
Lada-Richards (2007: 19–25). Slaney, Chapter 6, this volume, considers the possible influ-
ence of pantomime on Seneca’s chorus.
55
Lada-Richards (2007: 32–7). For solo singers accompanying pantomimic dance, see Lada-
Richards (2007: 42 and n. 23). For explicit evidence on the presence of the singing chorus in
pantomimic performances, see Lucian Salt. 63 and Lib. Or. 64, paras 87, 88, 91–3, 95–7.
56
The term regularly used in Greek texts for the pantomimic dancer was the unmarked term
orchêstês (dancer), pantomimus being the term used in Latin. See Molloy (1996: 81–5) and esp.
Lucian Salt. 67.
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28 Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
trace a shared conceptual apparatus between such discourses and later dis-
courses on pantomime dancing. Yet there are several instances in both
Lucian’s On Dance and later in Libanius’ On the Dancers that seem to be in
explicit or implicit dialogue or even debate with at least one inherited trad-
ition, the origins of which we are actually able to identify: Plato’s works. In
Lucian’s treatise, for instance, behind Crato’s detestation for the pantomime
dancer as the ‘girlish fellow who plays the wanton with dainty clothing and
bawdy songs and imitates love sick minxes . . . ’, it is possible to sense Plato’s
anxieties when discussing the morally proper dancing postures and melodies
in the Laws and asking whether a manly person and a cowardly one would
represent a fictive character beset by troubles with the same verbal utterances
and dancing postures.57
Similarly, in Libanius’ remarkably emphatic assertion that ‘dancing is not
made complete by songs, rather it is for the sake of dancing that the songs are
worked out’ one might see more than just the obvious fact that in pantomime
performances the kinetic component was more important than the vocal
one.58 In fact, a deeper conflict between the tradition underlying Libanius’
argument and the Platonic vision of an idealized choreia, where the kinetic
component essentially depends on the verbal one, may be at work here.59 In
actual choral practices of the archaic and the classical periods issues concern-
ing the relationship between the kinetic and the verbal were probably handled
in a less ideological and more empirical manner. According to Athenaeus, for
instance, Aeschylus was personally involved not only in the choreography but
also in the training of his choruses, a practice that may indicate established
ideas both about the inextricability of the verbal and the kinetic and about the
ad hoc adaptability of either one to the other.60 Furthermore, remarks such as
the one also by Athenaeus regarding Telesis or Telestes, Aeschylus’ dancer,
who was apparently able to make clear the action of the Seven against Thebes
simply by dancing, regardless of the accuracy of their details, indicate that a
discussion about the relationship between the verbal and the kinetic and the
priority of either one to the other was likely to have had deep roots well into
the fifth century bc.61 Interestingly, Plutarch, who also engages with this issue
in the ninth book of his Table Talk, quotes lines from a hyporchema he
57
Lucian Salt. 2 and Leg. 654e–655a. Not accidentally, Crato is soon explicitly to mention
Plato, along with Chrysippus and Aristotle (Salt. 2).
58
Lib. Or. 64.88 in Molloy’s translation ad loc. It should also be noted that Libanius’ oration
poses as a refutation of a (now lost) work by Aelius Aristides (Lib. Or. 64.4–5), in which the latter
might have been engaged as well in the discussion about the relationship between the verbal and
the kinetic components in pantomime dancing and possibly in Greek dance in general. See also
Molloy (1996: 86–7). On various aspects of pantomime dancing. see Hall and Wyles (2008).
59
On the kinetic component being essentially dependent on the verbal one, see esp. Leg. 816a.
60
Ath. Deipn.1.21e, with explicit reference to Chamaeleon as his source.
61
Ath. Deipn. 1.21f–22a. On this issue, see, e.g., Lawler (1954: 155–6); Golder (1996: 2–3).
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62
Quaest. Conv. 748a–c, trans. Sandbach (1961: 295). See also Lawler (1954); Lada-Richards
(2007: 26).
63
For a discussion of Plutarch’s references to choreia, see Bowie (2006).
64
For the scholia on Alcman’s Partheneion, see more recently Tsantsanoglou (2006).
For discussion of some of the interpretative problems in Alcman’s Louvre Partheneion, see
Budelmann, Chapter 5, this volume.
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30 Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi
of the Pleiades, drastically change one’s whole understanding of both the
poem’s semantic nexus and the role of the choral agents within it.65 More
importantly, a remarkable interest not only in the meaning of specific words
but also in the poem’s original setting as an actual performance can be seen in
some of Scholia A, where one of the scholiasts seems to be commenting on
possible successive alternations of both the performing choral speaker(s) and
their manner of oral delivery in different sections of the poem.66 The existence
or lack of such alternations affects one’s whole perception of issues relevant to
choral mimesis and choral identity in early performance practices. But it is an
open question whether these issues were ever explicitly addressed and dis-
cussed by ancient scholars as broader theoretical problems rather than just as
ad hoc exegetical remarks.
In this regard, the scholia on Pindar’s epinician odes are revealing. The
vigorous debate within classical scholarship in the last decades about
the identity attached to the first-person singular, which often appears in the
Pindaric odes, has raised broader issues pertaining to the representation of
the ‘self ’ in ancient lyric poetry as well as to notions of genre in antiquity
and the way these might affect modes of performance. The basic question
behind these much broader issues is whether one should understand several
obscure first-person singular utterances in Pindar as referring to the poet
himself or to a performing chorus. The answer to the question affects our
understanding of the odes as choral or monodic pieces.67 Interestingly, the
Pindaric scholia often reflect a similar uncertainty as to who the speaker of
the odes might be, but at the same time they display a remarkable flexibility.
We find phrases such as ‘the speech is of the chorus or of the poet’ and in a few
cases the issue is addressed in more detail.68 For instance, in the beginning of
the second strophe of Nemean 1 (ll. 20–4) a first-person singular voice says:
‘And I have taken my stand [estan] at the courtyard gates of a generous host as
I sing [melpomenos] of noble deeds, where a fitting feast has been arranged for
me, for this home is not unfamiliar with frequent visitors from abroad.’69 The
scholiast thinks that ‘it is uncertain whether this is the poet or the chorus. The
chorus could say this properly on its own [kuriôs . . . eph’ heautou] but Pindar
could also say this metaphorically’.70 In a couple of other cases the scholiast
suggests the possibility of a shifting identity behind the first-person utterances
65
On this issue and for further bibliography, see, e.g., Calame (1977b: 72 n. 52; 1983: 313,
331–2); more recently, Ferrari (2008: esp. 77–103).
66
Tsantsanoglou (2006: esp.11–12).
67
On this issue, see, e.g., Lefkowitz (1963, 1991); Heath (1988); Burnett (1989); Carey (1991);
Heath and Lefkowitz (1991); Morgan (1993); D’Alessio (1994).
68
See, e.g., $ Pyth. 5.96a, Pyth. 6.1a. In other cases, such as schol. Ol. 9.11a and Ol. 9.163b, the
option refers to a second-person addressee, being either the chorus or the poet himself.
69
Trans. Race (1997: 7).
70
Schol. Nem.1.29a.
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71
Schol. Nem. 7.123a.
72
See, e.g., Hes. Theog. 38–42; Sappho 44V.24–34; Alcaeus 130bV.17–20; Pind. Ol.10.76–7.
73
On this fascinating issue, see D’Angour (1997).
74
[Arist.] Pr. 11.46, trans. Mayhew (2011: 389).
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the orchestra is covered with straw, are choruses less able to be heard?’, to
which the answer is given that the voice in this case strikes rough, less unified
ground. ‘For it is not continuous,’ the Aristotelian speaker says, ‘just as the
light too shines more on smooth surfaces because it is not interrupted by
impediments’.75 Such examples, drawn from palpable everyday experience,
imply a vivid and culturally infiltrating choral world to which one could
handily refer to clarify otherwise abstract and quite complex notions.
Such a world of choral sounds and echoes, reflecting in various ways
accustomed contact with the somatic presence of performing choruses,
seems to be missing from treatises of literary criticism that nevertheless
show profound interest in the acoustics of verbal compositions. Since treatises
such as Longinus’ On the Sublime and Plutarch’s on How to Study Poetry do
not provide extensive discussion of choral works, we will conclude this chapter
with the first-century bc literary critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus while also
quoting an actual choral piece. Dionysius’ treatise On Literary Composition is
a representative instance of ancient criticism’s interest in describing and
classifying arrangements of the different phonetic qualities of vowels and
consonants. Structure in this case is studied not as relating to the sequence
of represented events, as Aristotle had put it in the Poetics, but to the sequence
of individual words, their interlacing perceived as creating different sonorities,
in turn affecting an author’s mode of signification. In aspiring to this type of
literary analysis, Dionysius’ critical thought moves freely across discourses
generically diverse, such as poetry, oratory, historiography, and philosophy.
When he discusses what he calls the ‘polished’ style, for instance, he examines
sonorousness in the arrangement of words in Sappho’s poetry and in Isocrates’
speeches.76 For the ‘austere’ style, he analyses passages from both Pindar and
Thucydides.77 The ‘austere’ style, Dionysius says, is not at all florid; it is
magnanimous, outspoken, unadorned. Words stand firmly on their own feet
and occupy strong positions; parts of the sentence shall be at considerable
distances from one another, separated by perceptible intervals; harsh and
dissonant collocations do happen; grammatical sequence can be neglected;
the construction of the length of the various periods has no concern for the
speaker’s breath.78 Dionysius illustrates this with the beginning of a dithyramb
by Pindar (fr. 75 M):
Come join our chorus, Olympians [Deut’ en choron Olympioi], 1
and send over it glorious grace, you gods
who are coming to the city’s crowded, incense-rich navel
75
[Arist.] Pr. 11.25, trans. Mayhew (2011: 371).
76
Dion. Hal. Comp. 23.
77
Dion. Hal. Comp. 22.
78
All references to Dionysius’ analysis are taken from the English translation of his treatise by
Usher (1985).
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79
Trans. Race (1997).
80
Trans. Usher (1985: 177). His ‘melodious’, however, should read ‘not melodious’ (ouk
euepes); the typographical error is corrected in my quotation.
81
On Dionysius’ approach to the sound of language in the broader context of similar interests
in antiquity, see Porter (2010: esp. 235–48). On the broader ideological parameters and the
normative aesthetics of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, see the extensive monograph by Wiater
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throughout this choral poem, including the mere word choros in the first line,
does Dionysius’ reader sense how Pindar’s choros emerges throughout these
lines as a vibrant and electrifying communal organism? For it is not just the
words’ sonorities that are a key to the acoustics of this poem, but the entire
synaesthetic network that creates an exuberant scene whereby the chorus
calls attention to its own corporeal presence. In a crescendo of sensual
associations—choral sounds and sights blurred with the sights and fragrances
of a blooming spring—this chorus begs to be seen and heard. Such synaes-
thetic voluptuousness, freely mingling singing voices, the sound of pipes, and
tresses adorned with sweet-smelling flowers, could regularly be achieved by
the Greek chorus when it flourished as a living cultural entity. No amount of
later literary analysis or theorizing could hope to capture the reality of such
total events.
(2011: esp. 226–77). On physicality in Greek lyric poetry (both monodic and choral), see E. Jones
(forthcoming).