The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth

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OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS
Published under the supervision of a Committee
of the Faculty of Classics in the University of Oxford
The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces
the Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish
books based on the best theses on Greek and Latin literature,
ancient history, and ancient philosophy examined by the Faculty
Board of Classics.
The Chorus of Drama
in the Fourth
Century BCE
Presence and Representation

LUCY C. M. M. JACKSON

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Lucy C. M. M. Jackson 2020
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First Edition published in 2020
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 Acknowledgements

This book began as an Oxford DPhil dissertation and found its final
form during a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at King’s College
London. I am so grateful for the space and resources awarded to me
by the Leverhulme Trust, by King’s College London, and by a panoply
of colleagues—especially at Corpus Christi College and the Archive of
Performances of Greek and Roman Drama—based at the University
of Oxford. It has been a privilege to be part of the research life of both
cities. An offshoot of the research that forms the basis of Chapter 7
appeared in the volume Emotion and Persuasion in Classical
Antiquity, edited by Ed Sanders and Matthew Johncock and pub-
lished by Steiner Verlag, and I also want to thank them for the
encouragement I received at the conference on which the volume
was based, and for their inviting me to be part of that publication.
Coming to the end of this process, this thinking up, writing,
re-writing, re-shaping, editing, re-writing-again process that has
stretched from the autumn of 2010 to the summer of 2019, I am left
with very little to say about this book’s subject, its genesis, my hopes
for the conversations it might prompt, or its deficiencies (the ones
I am aware of at any rate). Rather, I have a whole lot to say (well, at
least an appropriate amount for an Acknowledgements page) about
the people I’ve met and conversed with along the way, all of whom
have been joyously generous with their time and attention and to
whom I owe a great and happy debt.
My thesis supervisor, Felix Budelmann, has been a constant steady-
ing hand, a sounding-board and critic of the most useful sort
throughout the whole enterprise. He allowed this work to be utterly
my own, whilst still supporting me every step of the way, a magnifi-
cent feat that I am still only just beginning fully to appreciate. Edith
Hall was an effulgent and exacting external examiner, and her con-
tinued support has been the single most important factor in allowing
me to complete this project. Her example of how scholarship can and
must connect with the world around us is one that I shall be chasing
for years to come. The precise and discriminating eye of Scott Scul-
lion has improved the text of this book immeasurably. His boldness in
challenging dogma was an inspiration, too, from the very beginning
vi Acknowledgements
of my graduate work. Oliver Taplin, who steered my choral focus
towards the fourth century (and whose lectures on Greek tragedy
I still remember with a kind of quiet elation), has cheered and
encouraged me on, especially in these latter years.
Eric Csapo has been exceptionally generous in sharing unpublished
and forthcoming material, and taking the time to respond to some
wilder choral theories during my visit to the University of Sydney in
2013, and later in London and Vancouver. Peter Wilson, one of the
kindest scholars I’ve been fortunate to meet and talk to, read and
commented on the material in chapter one. It was with his encour-
agement that I managed to get the final text of this book over the
finish-line, and I want to thank him especially for his support. What I
owe to both of these scholars will be blindingly obvious in all that
follows.
Readers and interlocutors in Exeter, Oxford, Pisa, Princeton,
New York, Sydney, and London shaped and sharpened my ideas
and, at the same time, afforded all the friendship, humour, and
grace one so keenly needs during wobblier times: Rosa Andújar,
Claire Catenaccio, Jaś Elsner, Marco Fantuzzi, Patrick Finglass,
Almut Fries, Andrew Ford, Johanna Hanink, Adrian Kelly, Fiona
Macintosh, Toph Marshall, Sebastian Matzner, Justine McConnell,
Sara Monoson, Glenn Most, Victoria Moul, Sebastiana Nervegna,
Tim Rood, Richard Seaford, Matt Shipton, Helen Slaney, Henry
Stead, Lucy VanEssen-Fishman, Tim Whitmarsh, Matthew Wright,
Flo Yoon. Thank you, all.
To friends fortunate enough to have escaped my requests for
proofreading, and to my brilliant family (here, and there), you’ve
made all the difference in buoying me up and reminding me of a
bigger, wider, world—but I’ll tell you that in person. Rory, who keeps
me fierce, who read the whole of this book and really didn’t need to,
and who won the game of book dedications pretty much from day
one, thank you, and I love you.
Writing this book has taken place over such a rich, sad, and
wonderful nine years, and connected with so many parts of my life,
that a dedication to one single entity doesn’t seem quite right. And so
my last thanks are to all the sunchoreutai, the people, places, and ideas
with whom I’ve danced along the way.
 List of Figures

1.1. Fragments of a base of a choregic monument, from two sides,

Athens Agora Museum S 1025 + S 1586 + S 2586. 41
6.1. Relief found near the theatre of Dionysus in Athens, dated
to 375 350, Athens, National Museum 1750 VS. 196
6.2. Imagined reconstruction of a choregic monument
commemorating a comic victory. 197
6.3. Fragment of choregic pinax in ‘pentelic’ marble. Agora S 2098. 198
6.4. Choregic dedication, dated to c.350 25, Athens National
Museum 2400. 199
 Abbreviations, Citations, and Transliteration

Names of ancient authors and titles of their works are abbreviated as

in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Other abbreviated titles are as
follows.
CGFPR Austin, C. (1973), Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta in Papyris
Reperta. Berlin and New York.
DK Diels, H., and Kranz, W. (1951 2), Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker, 3. vols. Berlin.
FGrH Jacoby, F., et al. (eds) (1923 ) Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker. Berlin and Leiden.
KA Kassel, R., and Austin, C. (eds) (1983 ), Poetae Comici Graeci.
Berlin and New York.
MMC Webster, T. B. L. (1978), Monuments Illustrating Old and Middle
Comedy, 3rd edn, rev. J. Green, BICS Supp. 39, London.
MO Millis, B. W., and Olson, S. D. (2012), Inscriptional Records for the
Dramatic Festivals in Athens. Leiden.
MTS Webster, T. B. L. (1967), Monuments Illustrating Tragedy and
Satyr Play, 2nd edn, BICS Supp. 20, London.
PMG Page, D. L. (1962), Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford.
TrGF Snell, B., et al. (eds) (1971 ), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta.
Göttingen.
Wehrli Wehrli, F. (1967 9), Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und
Kommentar. 10. vols. Basel.
Citations are from the Oxford Classical Text where possible, from
TrGF for tragic fragments and K-A for comic. For names of people,
places, and literary works, I have used the more familiar Latinate
spellings—Aeschylus not Aischylos, Telephus not Telephos. An
exception are the names of the Attic demes. Words that exist in
English are not italicized (‘chorus’ and ‘coryphaeus’, ‘parodos’ and
‘parabasis’). For other Greek words, I have transliterated and placed
these in italics (choregos, didaskalos, demos, etc.)
I construe the chorus as both a singular and plural entity, and so
my verb usage in relation to the chorus also shifts between the two,
depending on whether I mean the chorus as a single element in a
play’s make-up or feature of drama, or a group of people.
All dates are BCE unless otherwise stated.
All translations are my own except where noted.
 Introduction

In the fourth century , theatre was a vital and growing industry
across the Greek-speaking world.1 Dramatic performances, usually as
part of a festival celebration, were being added to the line up of events
in more and more places far from the epicentre of Athens.2 New
engineering techniques were being adopted in the building of stone
theatres, permanent and lasting homes for all kinds of performance
including drama.3 Extensive and elaborate institutional and financial
provisions were in place to support dramatic performances in Athens
and in the demes of Attica, and similar or modified institutions for
the funding of theatrical productions were being deployed in Sicily,
Boeotia, and Macedonia.4 The celebrity of actors and aulos-players
(auletes) saw them commanding outrageously large fees for perform-
ances, and allowed them to travel the length and breadth of the
ancient Mediterranean and beyond.5 Statues of dramatic poets were
set up in theatres.6 By the time of Alexander’s campaigns as far as the
Indus valley in the mid 320s, the performance of drama had come to
signify a shared language across multiple geographies and cultures,
such was its popularity and proliferation.7

1
Recent important studies affirming drama’s vitality in the fourth century are
Easterling 1993 and 1997, Taplin 2009, Csapo 2010a: 38 82 and 83 7, Csapo, Götte,
Green, and Wilson 2014, Hanink 2014a: 191 220, Lamari 2015: 181 5.
2
Easterling 1994: 73 80, Dearden 1999, Revermann 2000: 451 67, Taplin 1999:
33 57 and 2007a: 5 15, Allan 2001: 67 86, Wilson 2007c: 351 77, Bosher 2006 and
2012, Braund and Hall 2014a, Vahtikari 2014, Csapo and Wilson 2015, Stewart 2017.
3
Csapo 2007, Götte 2014, Moretti 2014, Papastamati von Moock 2014.
4
Wilson 2000, 2007c and 2007e, 2010.
5
Easterling and Hall 2002, Csapo 2004, Duncan 2005, Hall 2006, Csapo 2004:
53 76 and 2010a, Junker 2010: 131 48, Power 2010, Slater 2010.
6
Plut. Mor.841f and IG II2 2320.20 2 (M O) with Hanink 2014a: 90 9 and 183 8.
7
Hall 2007: 285 6.

The Chorus of Drama in the Fourth Century BCE: Presence and Representation.
Lucy C. M. M. Jackson, Oxford University Press (2020). © Lucy C. M. M. Jackson.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844532.001.0001
2 Introduction
Yet, amid the recent scholarly appreciation of the fourth century’s
vigorous theatre industry, no study has focused on one particular
element in Attic drama, its defining element, in fact—the chorus. This
is all the more notable in light of the many studies of contiguous
choral genres or time-periods in the past two decades. 2013 saw the
publication of two volumes dedicated to the chorus of drama in the
fifth century.8 Peter Wilson’s comprehensive survey and continued
examination of the institution of the choregia (a quasi-voluntary
secular office that facilitated the funding and organization of many
of the city’s choruses—dramatic and non-dramatic) has illuminated
the historical presence and political role of those choruses that were
produced within the choregic system.9 The dithyramb, the paean, the
pyrrhic, and the theoric chorus, too, have all had recent analysis.10
Also relevant is the renewed and recent appreciation for fourth-
century lyric poetry.11 One of the most influential theorizers about
the chorus, Plato, and his Laws, have also been the subject of no fewer
than three volumes published since 2010.12 And yet, despite all this
related research, the activity and immediate reception of the fourth-
century dramatic chorus remains entirely unexamined.
There are some real challenges to performing such a study. The
evidence for the text, music, and movement that the chorus per-
formed is mostly in fragments, and some of these can only tentatively
be attributed to the chorus (or the fourth century) in the first place.
Although there is some evidence for choral performers becoming
increasingly professional throughout the fourth century, there are
only a very few that are named or that we know anything about.13

8
Billings, Budelmann, and Macintosh 2013, Gagné and Hopman 2013. We can
also add Calame 2017 to the list of volumes focusing on fifth century dramatic
choruses.
9
Wilson 2000. See also Wilson 2007a: 351 77, 2007b: 125 32 and 2011a: 19 44.
While the tragic chorus is sometimes discussed specifically (e.g. 2000: 4 6, 77 80 cf.
also 194 7), it is the circular chorus and its workings that are most thoroughly
illuminated in Wilson’s work.
10
Dithyramb Sutton 1989, Ieranò 1997, Kowalzig and Wilson 2013. Paean
Rutherford 2001. Pyrrhic Ceccarelli 1998 and 2004: 91 117. Theoria (including
choruses) Rutherford 2013.
11
Neumann Hartman 2004, Vamvouri Ruffy 2004, Schröder 2006, Kolde 2003
and 2010, Power 2010, Ford 2011, and LeVen 2014.
12
Peponi 2013a, Prauscello 2014, Folch 2015.
13
For professional choral performers in the third century and later, see Slater 1993,
Wilson 2000: 289 90, 292 3, and Le Guen 2001:108 14. The naming of choral
performers is rare, and debate surrounds what these names might actually be able
 Introduction 3
The venues for and times when the choruses of drama would have
performed can be identified, but the qualities of those performances,
and the impact of the choral component of the drama in particular,
have left little trace in our extant sources. All kinds of performance
have an impact that is ephemeral and contingent on the various
vantage points, both literal and in terms of the previous experience,
of individual audience members. The chorus in drama, for whom
song and movement were so crucial, suffers acutely in this. Those
of us who have been lucky enough to have witnessed powerful
choral groups performing on stage in our own time have only our
own experiences as a guide to what might have been possible in
Attic drama.
There is one fourth-century testimonium that may also have dis-
couraged scholars from facing these not inconsiderable challenges.
A famous passage in Aristotle’s Poetics seems to indicate a definite
change in choral practice, at least as far as tragedy is concerned,
beginning in the final decades of the fifth century.
καὶ τὸν χορὸν δὲ ἕνα δεῖ ὑπολαμβάνειν τῶν ὑποκριτῶν, καὶ μόριον εἶναι
τοῦ ὅλου καὶ συναγωνίζεσθαι μὴ ὥσπερ Εὐριπίδῃ ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ Σοφοκλεῖ.
τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς τὰ ᾀδόμενα οὐδὲν μᾶλλον τοῦ μύθου ἢ ἄλλης τραγῳδίας
ἐστίν διὸ ἐμβόλιμα ᾄδουσιν πρώτου ἄρξαντος Ἀγάθωνος τοῦ τοιούτου.
καίτοι τί διαφέρει ἢ ἐμβόλιμα ᾄδειν ἢ εἰ ῥῆσιν ἐξ ἄλλου εἰς ἄλλο ἁρμόττοι
ἢ ἐπεισόδιον ὅλον; 1456a25 32
The chorus should be treated as one of the actors; it should be a part of
the whole and should participate [sc. ‘in the action’], not as in Euripides
but as in Sophocles. With the other poets, the songs are no more integral
to the plot than to another tragedy hence the practice, started by
Agathon, of singing interlude odes. Yet what is the difference between
singing interlude odes and transferring a speech or whole episode from
one work to another? (Trans. Halliwell 1995)
These few lines have provided the foundation for the idea that the
choruses of Aristotle’s day were of a lesser quality than those of the
earlier fifth century.14 And yet, so much is unclear in this oft-cited

to tell us, see IG I3 969, the ‘Pronomos’ Vase (c.400, Naples NM 81673) with
discussion in Osborne 2010, and an Attic red figure bell krater depicting (?) a circular
chorus (Copenhagen 13817, see Wilson 2000: 76 fig. 4).
14
Mastronarde (2010: 88) provides a carefully worded gloss of what it is usually
thought this passage means: ‘In some fourth century tragedies the choral parts had
apparently become mere interludes dividing the “acts” (eventually the canonical “five
4 Introduction
passage, from the meaning of specific words (e.g. συναγωνίζεσθαι,
‘have a share in the contest’/ ‘help win the contest’), phrases (e.g.
μόριον εἶναι τοῦ ὅλου, ‘part of the whole’), to who, precisely, οἱ
λοιποί are (usually translated, as here, as ‘the other poets’), and
what ἐμβόλιμα might be.15 Despite the fact that it is the genre of
tragedy that is being specifically discussed, this passage forms the
foundation for the idea that the chorus not just of tragedy but also of
comedy entered into a decline at the end of the fifth century.16
A paucity of source material in our written record for what the
chorus said and sang is made even more conspicuous by a scribal
habit, found in our earliest papyri and continued on in some manu-
script traditions. When a chorus is approaching the stage or is due to
perform an ode, or when one section of the drama seems to be
coming to a close, instead of a choral ode we often find the words
χοροῦ or χοροῦ μέλος—‘song of the chorus’.17 The tendency among
scholars has been to read these words not as indicating something
about scribes’ practices (as with, for example, the practice in these
early manuscripts of using letters rather than the names of characters,
or a paragraphos—a mark that looks like a dash—to indicate a change
of speaker), but rather as an indicator of the quality of the choral text;
that the odes were ‘perceived as being dispensable by those preserving
the plays on papyrus’.18 On some quite slight grounds, then, the
inference has widely been made from the insertion of χοροῦ that the
quality of the choral song and dance in these dramas was manifestly
poor, and it is similarly assumed that if the quality of the choral song
had been good (say, as good as every single one of the choral odes of
Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and fifth-century Aristophanes),
then they would have been preserved for us in textual form.
The testimony from Aristotle, and the scribal habit of writing
χοροῦ in place of the text of a choral ode, are two data points worth

acts”) in which the named characters performed their scenes without any interaction
with a chorus, and such unrelated songs or embolima (as Aristotle termed them) had,
so far as we know, no relation in content to the actors’ scenes.’
15
See detailed discussions in Else 1957, Halliwell 1986 and 1987, and Scattolin 2011.
16
For a recent example of how easily scholars cite Aristotle, inappositely, to
support claims made about the comic chorus, see Hunter 2017: 213 18.
17
Pöhlmann 1977: 69 70.
18
The communis opinio as articulated by Marshall 2002: 4. We find a similar
reading in Capps (1895: 320) ‘probably an indication of the loss of the original odes
of an intermezzic character’.
 Introduction 5
confronting, and they will be discussed in full in Chapter 5 of this
book. However, various other circumstances have shaped how these
two phenomena have been interpreted, and at the same time, may
have served as subtle (or not so subtle) deterrents to any further
scholarly curiosity about the fourth-century dramatic chorus. The
notion that there is next to no evidence for the development of
the fourth-century dramatic chorus is not helped by an imbalance
in the kinds of source material that have been preserved. The belief in
a fifth-century Athenian ‘Golden Age’, an idea that was, as Johanna
Hanink has recently demonstrated,19 consciously created and curated
by Athens in the latter part of the fourth century, seems to have led
directly to the preservation of thirty-one (more or less) complete
tragedies, one satyr play, and nine complete comedies, all first per-
formed during that fifth-century ‘Golden Age’.20 It seems that if the
Rhesus had not been attributed to Euripides, we would have no
complete plays from the fourth century at all.21 The preservation
(or not) of text that can tell us about what the dramatic chorus sang
and spoke is, then, thoroughly tied up with a much larger question of
periodization. The historical ‘Classical’ period may run from c.500 to
323, but the phenomenon of Attic drama is still mostly spoken of as
ending its hey-day in 401 with Sophocles’ (posthumously performed)
Oedipus at Colonus.22 This is slightly disconcerting when the majority
of our evidence for the organization and immediate reception of Attic
drama comes, in fact, from fourth-century sources.23 Drama that was
performed in the mid fourth century is not uncommonly labelled
‘Hellenistic’.24

19
‘ . . . it was the Athenians themselves who, especially in the latter part of the
fourth century, began constructing the pedestal upon which their drama still stands in
the modern imagination’, Hanink 2014a: 6.
20
Aristophanes’ Women at the Assembly and Wealth are nearly complete, but
some of their choral odes have been excised, see below p. 142 for signs of excision in
Wealth.
21
On the almost certain fourth century date for the Rhesus, see p. 53 n. 7 below.
22
See Wright 2016: 117 20 for a discussion of this problematic periodization of
tragedy.
23
E.g. looking through The Context of Ancient Drama section 3Ai (Festival
Organization), only nine out of the sixty three testimonia from the Classical period
come from before 400. For an excellent demonstration of how fourth century evi
dence has been applied to fifth century historical practice, and the distortions that can
come of doing so, see Bosher 2009.
24
Sifakis 1963 and 1967, Xanthakis Karamanos 1993, Kotlińska Toma 2015.
6 Introduction
A notion that the artists in the fourth century were, in general, not
what they once were (morally and technically) has had a long and
variegated life.25 The alleged political and economic exhaustion of
Athens after the city’s defeat at Arginusae in 406 and its capitulation
to Spartan hegemony, the innovations in musico-poetic technology
and practice, the shifting tastes of the audiences and the increase in
the number of those audiences, experimentation with dramaturgical
convention—all of these have encouraged some scholars to dismiss
whole swathes of poetic production in the fourth century, including
the dramatic chorus. Diachronic development has been an important
framework for structuring how we talk about all sorts of classical
cultural phenomena, encouraged perhaps by the Aristotelian pen-
chant for similar kinds of biologically-informed narratives of growth,
acme, and decline, and drama has been no exception. But in recent
years, scholars have sought to demonstrate that the political
upheavals in Athens around the end of the fifth century, while
significant, were not the epoch-ending events that some (including
Aristophanes, as well as later authors) presented them as.26 We are
now in a position to proclaim more strongly the aspects of continuity
within the historical Classical period.
Despite the slim evidence for its quality and activity, some very
definite and unequivocal ideas about the fourth-century dramatic
chorus continue to underpin scholarly conceptions of Attic drama
and its development. Rooted explicitly or implicitly in the passage of
Aristotle quoted above, there is a clear sense that ‘decline’ continues,
in general, to be a good one-size-fits-all term for the way the dramatic
chorus developed, whether it be with regard to the activity of the
chorus, the number of performers, the interaction with actors and
plot, melic quality, or thematic importance.27 This has been most

25
‘I’m in need of a skilful poet./ Some of them are no more, and those that are alive
are degenerates’, δέομαι ποιητοῦ δεξιοῦ./ οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὐκέτ’ εἰσίν, οἱ δ’ ὄντες κακοί, Ar.
Ran. 71 2. ‘Nach dreihundert Jahren . . . steigt die Muse . . . vom Wagen und geht
fortan zu Fuß. Die Prosa tritt ihren Siegeszug an’, Seidensticker 1995: 175. See also
Croiset 1929: 390 403, Rose 1934: 71 2, Hadas 1950: 108 9, Lesky 1971: 630 40,
Beye 1975: 175, Dihle 1994: 223 8.
26
‘This melodrama of the poet, the city, and the genre, all sitting together on the
stoop of the fourth century blubbering over lost glory, has had surprising appeal’
Csapo 2000: 124, see also Hall 2007: 264 88 and LeVen 2014: 81 3 on the debate
around lyric poetry’s ‘decline’ beginning in the sixth century.
27
‘Zurücktreten’ (Flashar 1967: 154), ‘reduzierte’ (Nesselrath 1990: 52), ‘quantita
tivamente e qualitativamente ristretta’ (Perusino 1986: 64). There are a growing
 Introduction 7
clearly asserted for the comic chorus: ‘It is well known that in the
fourth century the comic chorus went through a period of decline,
which ended with its standardisation into a group of drunk youths,
who invariably appeared in all plays of New Comedy.’28 There has been
significantly less discussion about the fourth-century tragic chorus,
although its development is usually still traced along similar lines as
that of comedy.29 The satyr play is rarely included in such discussions,
as even less is known about this genre of performance, although we do
know it continued to have a place in the festival line up.30
At the outset, we should confront how unhelpful a term like
‘decline’ is. It does both too much and not enough work. It encour-
ages a monolithic view of an area where the only thing that we can be
certain of is that there was a variety of practice (just as is true for the
choral techniques of our extant fifth-century playwrights). The term
is, also, extraordinarily imprecise, admitting all manner of qualitative
(and some quantitative) definitions that can vary from scholar to
scholar without any scrutiny. In some older scholarly works we see
the suggestion that choral odes in the fourth century consisted of
purely musical performances31 or a dance without singing or words32
or even that there was a total absence of a choral component in
drama33—all of which fail to account for the certain and positive
evidence for song and dance being regarded as essential components
of drama and its chorus in the fourth century.34 More recently,

number of scholars sceptical of such decline e.g. Wilson 2000: 241 2, 265, and 267,
LeVen 2014: 59, and Wright 2016: 200.
28
Sifakis 1971: 416. See also Maidment 1935: 8 ‘a growing incongruity between
chorus and actors’; Arnott 1972: 65 ‘a dim shadow . . . who have no function what
ever in the plot’; Perusino 1986: 71 ‘una progressive esautorazione del coro’; Ireland
2010: 352 ‘no more than the provider of interludes’.
29
Capps 1895: 288 (giving ‘the prevailing view’), Flickinger 1918: 148 9, Csapo
and Slater 1995: 349, Scattolin 2010: 176, Storey 2011: xxxi ii, Taplin 2012: 241,
Hunter 2017: 228 9.
30
IG II2 2320 Col. II.18 19, 32 3 with M O: 61. Shaw 2014: 141 2 and Cohn 2015:
568 9.
31
No doubt projecting Roman theatre practice back onto the fourth century, see
Haigh 1889: 261. See Maidment 1935: 11 nn. 2 and 4 for older bibliography stating
this view.
32
Holzinger 1940: 125, Beare 1955: 51, Russo 1994: 232 3 (contra Laws 654b3 7)
and Gelzer 1993: 95.
33
Ussher 1969: 29 30 and Ireland 2010: 352. Flashar 1967: 155 n. 5 prefers to
profess ignorance.
34
E.g. e.g. Aristotle Poetics 1456a27 9 τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς τὰ ᾀδόμενα οὐδὲν μᾶλλον
τοῦ μύθου ἢ ἄλλης τραγῳδίας ἐστίν and Ar.Plut. 760 1 ἀλλ’ εἶ’, ἁπαξάπαντες ἐξ ἑνὸς
8 Introduction
decline has been quantified by identifying a reduction in the percentage
of choral lines in tragedy and comedy, but for both these genres the
numbers presented do not tell the whole story and are open for
debate.35 The suggestion that fourth-century odes were not written
by the poet himself is another favoured feature of the decline narra-
tive,36 but one, it should be noted early (and often), with absolutely no
evidence to support it.37
Decline has also been located in the perceived decrease in inter-
action between actors and chorus in both tragedy and comedy,38 or in
the suggestion that the content of the chorus’ odes was irrelevant to
the plot (implicit when odes are labelled ‘intermezzic’). This last
judgement is particularly fraught as the charge of irrelevance has
been and must always be made on highly subjective grounds. As
shown by the rehabilitation of Euripides’ later choral odes, once
also deemed ‘irrelevant’, irrelevance is itself a term that relies on
one’s view of drama and how it works.39 More often than not, it is
the reputation of the poet, or the tastes of the time and individual
preference of the reader that has shaped these judgements of irrele-
vance. By contrast, we can fully appreciate a choral song like Sopho-
cles’ ‘Ode to Man’ in the Antigone, which makes no direct reference to

λόγου/ ὀρχεῖσθε καὶ σκιρτᾶτε καὶ χορεύετε, or 1209 δεῖ γὰρ κατόπιν τούτοις ᾄδοντας
ἕπεσθαι.
35
Csapo and Slater 1995: 349 in their statistical account of declining choral
presence in the fifth century note the exceptions to this suggested trend Bacchae
has 27 per cent choral lines and Oedipus at Colonus has 22 per cent. If we add the
Iphigenia at Aulis (21.7 per cent) which, incidentally, had choral lines actually added
to the script at some point for a performance, and the Rhesus which has 28.5 per cent,
it is Euripides’ Orestes with 10.5 per cent choral lines that looks like the exception.
Csapo 1999 2000: 399 426 gives a more detailed analysis including percentages of
choral and actor’s song, but the import of such statistics remains open for discussion.
For comedy, any guesses at what percentage of The Assemblywomen and Wealth were
choral must rest on guesswork regarding the length of the odes that have not been
transmitted with the rest of the text.
36
Flickinger 1912: 33 4, Webster 1953: 59 n. 1, Sifakis 1963: 31, Arnott 1972: 65,
Handley 1985: 400, Sutton 1990: 92, Rothwell 1992: 219, Zimmerman 1998: 187,
Sidwell 2001: 78 84, Slater 2002: 316n.30.
37
N.B. Aristotle Poetics 1456a27 32 contains no clear indication about who is
responsible for writing the sung parts (τὰ ᾀδόμενα). See pp. 150 62 for a full
discussion of this passage.
38
E.g. in comedy: Flickinger 1918: 148 9, Kranz 1933: 262, Ferrari 1948: 177 87,
Sifakis 1967: 113, Dover 1972: 194 5, Rothwell 1992: 209, Zimmerman 1998: 173 89.
In tragedy: Xanthakis Karamanos 1980: 8 and Mastronarde 2010: 88 152.
39
Mastronarde 2010: 126 45. See also Swift 2009.
 Introduction 9
the plot, nor moves the action forward in any way, yet is undoubtedly
a valuable and formative part of the play. Finally, decline might be
applied to the supposed incapability of fourth-century poets to com-
pose ‘good’ lyric poetry for the chorus to sing, despite the variety of
lyric metres found in those fragments of choral text that we do have,
and a culture of sophisticated and highly competitive lyric compos-
ition running strong throughout the fourth century.40
The imprecision that is encouraged by continuing to use the word
‘decline’ is but one reason why a focused study of the dramatic chorus
in fourth-century Attic drama is worthwhile. There is a clear tension
between the traditional interpretation of Aristotle Poetics 1456a25–32
and the general picture of choral vigour that is indicated even in the
relatively limited evidence we do have. Fragments of fourth-century
tragedy show that choruses not only had a part in the drama, but that
they could also have varied fictional identities (Cyprians, slave
women, Minyans, bacchants, Trojans or ‘chosen men’ of Aetolia in
tragedy, Scythians, women, young men, hunters, companions of
Odysseus, cities, Furies, and builders in comedy) and dialogue with
characters.41 The continued performance of satyr play at the Dionysia
too would hardly have been possible without its chorus in all its
integrated and active glory. The revived productions of tragedy,
instituted at the Dionysia in 386, would have included choruses,
and the choral parts in some of the revived fifth-century plays even
seem to have been enlarged.42 In light of the number of choral
performers that will have taken part in even a single year’s choral
calendar (the Deme Dionysia, the Lenaea, the City Dionysia, the
Thargelia, and the Panathenaea for certain), the idea that dramatic
choral performances could not be supported in terms of teaching,
talent, or manpower is likewise far-fetched. In fact, Lycurgus in the
330s was responsible for increasing the number of annual choral
performances as part of what seems to have been a cogent program
of re-invigorating a post-Chaeronea Athens, demonstrating the
continuity of valued choral performance in general in Athens after

40
LeVen 2014 (focusing on the earlier part of the fourth century) and Ford 2011
on Aristotle’s ‘Hymn to Hermias’.
41
On choral identities see pp. 69 70 below.
42
See pp. 95 102 on additions made to the Iphigenia at Aulis in reperformance (cf.
Kovacs 2003: 77 103) including an enlargement of the choral parts and the addition
of a second chorus at lines 590 7.
10 Introduction
the fifth century.43 The potential for high-quality choral lyric, too, is
evidenced in the lyric compositions that have recently been re-appraised
in modern scholarship, including one poem by Aristotle himself.44 This
tension between the usual interpretation of Aristotle (and χοροῦ) and
our other evidence has not been addressed in any substantial way and
this book seeks to do just that.
However, there is more to be done than simply providing an
alternative narrative of dramatic choral development. As is currently
being demonstrated in various recent studies of fragmentary material,
looking beyond the canonical plays and/or authors allows us to gain a
much richer understanding of how diverse the genres of tragedy,
comedy, and satyr play really were in the Classical period.45 What is
common to many of these studies is the way they note a ‘co-existence’
of different forms and techniques at any and every point in the
Classical period.46 On the basis of currently available evidence, it is
simply not possible to make firm general suggestions concerning how
the dramatic chorus changed over the course of eighty years or so
between 401 and the late 320s. Rather, the foregrounding (and valid-
ation) of the choral speech and song we do have will provide a means
of enriching our understanding of dramatic choral practice more
generally. The rambunctious character of the chorus in the Rhesus
need not be an indication of a particular tendency in fourth-century
dramatic technique, but another example of the kinds of things an
audience might appreciate, or a poet might look to his chorus for
when writing his plays. By looking at the fourth-century chorus, our
knowledge of what the dramatic chorus is and does is challenged and
enhanced.
The relevance of this study to our understanding of fifth-century
drama in particular can be stated a little more strongly. The trad-
itional acceptance of choral decline in the fourth century begs an

43
Plut. Mor.842a. See Humphreys 2004: 77 110 for further details of Lycurgan
measures at this time.
44
Ford 2011, LeVen 2014.
45
E.g. Harvey and Wilkins 2000, and more recently see Chronopoulos and Orth
2015 and Wright 2016.
46
Zimmerman 2015: 14 notes ‘die Koexistenz verschiedener komischer Spielfor
men schon im 5 Jahrhundert, die man nach der communis opinio erst später ansetzte,
sowie das Vorhandensein von Charakteristika, die man als auf eine frühere Phase
beschränkt ansah, in späteren Phasen der Gattungsgeschichte.’ See also Henderson
2015: 146 58 on variety in fifth century comedy and Konstantakos 2015: 159 98 on
the prudence of abandoning the term ‘Middle’ comedy.
Another random document with
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in that awful maze of rock and water; but, hurrah, it was to emerge
into a landscape beautiful beyond all description.
The region was a wilderness, but soon—the day after that in which
we issued from the labyrinth, in fact—we sighted our first habitation
of man in this world of Drome. The next day we reached a village,
where we passed the night. We were much struck by that deep
respect with which Drorathusa was received. As for our own
reception—well, that really gave us something to think about.
Not that there was any sign of menace. There was nothing like that.
It was the looks, the very mien of those Hypogeans that, to say the
least, puzzled and worried Rhodes and myself. That Drorathusa
endeavored to allay the suspicion or dread (or whatever it was) in
the minds of the people was as clear to us as if we had understood
every word spoken. The manner, however, in which they received
her address but enhanced our uneasiness. No voice was raised in
dissent to what she said; but there was no blinking the fact that there
was no acquiescence whatever in what she urged so earnestly.
"What in the world, Milton," I asked, "does it mean?"
"Ask me something that I can tell you, Bill," was Rhodes' consoling
answer. "You know, when we came in sight of that first Droman
habitation, I thought that now our troubles were just about over."
"So did I."
"But we see now that we were wrong, Bill, that we were wrong. It is a
queer business, and Goodness only knows what it means."
"It means trouble," I told him.
And the very next day showed that I was right.
We embarked at an early hour the following morning and in another
and larger boat. It had a high ornamented prow and was indeed a
lovely little craft. This day's voyage brought us to the City of
Lellolando. It has a population of about fifteen thousand, and there
Rhodes and I had our first sight of the beautiful Droman architecture,
as displayed, that is, in the public buildings, for the dwellings are in
no wise remarkable. These public buildings are not many, of course,
in a place so small, but their beauty was indeed a surprise and a
pleasure.
Incomparably the most wonderful is the temple, built upon the
summit of a great rounded rock in almost the very center of the city.
It was as though we had been transported back to "the glory that
was Greece." Yes, it is my belief, and the belief of Milton Rhodes
also, that this temple would not have suffered could it by some
miracle have been placed beside the celebrated temple of Artemis at
Ephesus. Buildings more wonderful than this we were to see, the
grandest of all the great temple in Nornawnla Prendella, the Golden
City, which is the capital of Drome; but I do not think that anything we
saw afterwards struck us with greater wonder and amazement.
"Some Chersiphron," said Rhodes, "must have wandered from
Drome and finally made his way up into ancient Greece and taught
the secrets of his art there. It is indeed a marvel that the art of the
ancient Hellenes and this of Drome are so very similar. And yet they
must have been autochthonous.
"But," he added, "I wonder what they worship in that splendid place.
Some horrible pantheon, perhaps."
"Let us," said I, "give them the benefit of the doubt. For all that we
know to the contrary, these Dromans may be true monotheists."
And this, I rejoice to say, the Dromans are, though, I regret to
subjoin, there are some very absurd things in their religion, things
dark and even things very terrible.
But I anticipate in this, for it was just after we landed that it
happened.
We had started up one of the principal streets, on our way to the
house of a high functionary, though, of course, Rhodes and I had no
idea whither we were bound. On either side the street, was a solid
mass of humanity—many of the young people, by the way, having
hair as white as snow, like that of our Nandradelphis. Of a sudden a
man, lean of visage and with eyes that glowed like red coals, broke
through the guards (a half dozen or so were marching along on
either side of our little procession) and slashed savagely at the face
of Rhodes with a great curved dagger. My companion sprang aside,
almost thrusting me onto my knees, and the next instant he dealt the
man a blow with his alpenstock. The blow, however, was a slanting
one, ineffectual. With a scream, the fellow sprang again, his terrible
knife upraised; but the guards threw themselves upon him, and he
was dragged off, struggling and screaming like a maniac.
Of a truth, Rhodes had had a very narrow escape.
And what did it mean?
"It might," I said, "have been the act of a madman."
"It might have been," was Milton's answer. "But, unless I am greatly
mistaken, there was something besides madness back of it."
 Chapter 39
THE GOLDEN CITY
Our stay in that place was marred by no other untoward incident; but
right glad was I when, on the following morning, we were in our boat
and going down the stream once more.
"We ought to be safe out here," I remarked at last.
"I don't know about that, Bill," smiled Milton. "The stream is not a
wide one certainly, and those bushes and trees that line the bank
offer—there, look at that!"
But a hundred feet or so before us, a boat was gliding out from the
concealment of a mass of foliage. There were three men in it, and
the looks which they fixed upon us were lowering and sinister.
"Look at that fellow!" said Milton Rhodes, drawing his revolver. "If
that isn't the chap who broke through with the amicable intention of
carving me, all I have to say is that he is his twin brother."
This man was thin almost to emaciation, but his companions were
burly fellows, every lineament of them bespeaking the ruffian.
They held their craft stationary or nearly so. In a few moments,
therefore, we were drawing near to them. Drorathusa had arisen,
and she spoke to the occupants of the strange boat in a rather
sharp, imperious manner. Her presence or her words seemed to awe
them; and I was thanking our lucky stars that, after all, there was not
going to be any trouble, when of a sudden, just as the drift of our
boat brought Rhodes and me alongside, their bridled passions burst
forth in a storm of snarls, cries and fierce gestures of menace. There
was a moment when I thought that they were actually going to
attempt to board us. But they then drew off a few yards, though there
was no diminution in that storm of abuse, execrations and threats
that was hurled upon us. All three were armed, but no motion
towards their weapons was made. The reason for that, I suppose,
was the sight of Ondonarkus and Zenvothunbro standing there each
with an arrow to the string. Certainly the fellows did not in any way
fear our weapons.
Some minutes passed, during which the two boats continued to drift
almost side by side and that hideous clamor filled the air. At last, in
an attempt to put an end to it, Milton Rhodes raised his revolver and
took careful aim. Drorathusa gave a cry and then addressed some
rather fierce words to the trio. In all likelihood, she did not know what
Rhodes was going to do. He fired. As he was standing and as but a
little distance separated the boats, the bullet, which struck just above
the waterline, went out through the bottom. The change was
magical. You should have seen those fellows! Whether it was the
report of the weapon or whether it was the hole through which the
water came spouting in, I do not know; but the taming of those wild
men was swift and complete. As soon as they had recovered their
wits, round flew the bow of their boat and away they went towards
the shore. Our Dromans burst into laughter, even Drorathusa. And
that was the last that we saw of those three fanatics.
But why had they done it? Wherefore were Milton Rhodes and I the
objects of a hatred so fierce and so insensate?
Nor were we permitted to forget that fact. Intelligence of our arrival
had spread almost as quickly as though it had been broadcasted by
radio, and along the banks the people were waiting, in twos and
threes, in scores and in hundreds, to see the men from the
mysterious and fearful World Above—harbingers, in their minds, of
calamities and nameless things. Goodness only knows how many
fists were shaken at Rhodes and me during the day, how many were
the maledictions that they hurled upon us. Happily, however, there
was no act of hostility.
"You know, Bill," Milton smiled, "I am beginning to wish that we were
back there among those gogrugrons, whatever they are, and the
tree-octopi."
This day's voyage brought us to the City of Dranondocrad. There a
change was made that certainly did not displease me—from our little
craft to none other than one of the queen's own, a long beautiful
vessel with oarsmen and guards.
The next day we passed a large tributary flowing in from our left,
from out a yawning cavern there. This was by no means, however,
the first cave we had seen entering the main one. As one moves
through some valley in the mountains, smaller ones are seen coming
in on either hand; and so it was in this great cavern of Drome, save
that the valleys were caves. In that place, the great cavern itself has
a width of two miles or more, and it is four or five thousand feet up to
the vaulted roof.
"One wonders," said I, "why the roof doesn't cave in."
"Pooh, Bill!" said Rhodes. "One doesn't marvel that natural bridges
don't collapse or that the roof of the Mammoth Cave doesn't come
crashing down."
The two days succeeding this brought us into the very heart of
Drome, and on the third we reached the Golden City itself.
This, the capital of the Droman nation, is situated at the lower end of
a lake, a most picturesque sheet of water some fifteen miles in
length. Where the river flows into it and for a distance of about a
league down, the lake extends from one wall of the great cavern
clean to the other. The walls go straight down into the water to what
depth no man knows.
It was about midafternoon when our boat, followed by a fleet of
smaller craft, glided out onto this lovely expanse of water. At a point
about halfway down the lake, we had our first view of Narnawnla
Prendella, the Golden City. I say view, but it was in reality but little
more than a glimpse that we obtained. For, almost at that very
moment, a dense gloom fell upon water and landscape. Fierce and
dreadful were the flickerings along the roof a mile or more above us.
So sudden and awful was the change that even the Dromans
seemed astonished. There was a blinding flash overhead, and then
utter blackness everywhere.
Rhodes and I flashed on our lights. For a time the Dromans waited,
as though expecting the light to come at any moment; but it did not
come. Along the shore on either side and in the distant city, lights
were gleaming out. A sudden voice came, mystic and wonderful;
Rhodes and I turned, and there was Drorathusa standing with arms
extended upward in invocation, as we had seen her in that first
eclipse. Minutes passed. But the light did not come. At last the oars
were put in motion again. Dark and agitated, however, were the
looks of the Dromans, and more than one pair of eyes fixed
themselves on Rhodes and me in a manner that plainly marked us
as objects of some superstitious dread—if, indeed, it was not
something worse.
Steadily, however, our boat glided forward through the black and
awful night.
"What is that?" I at length asked as suddenly there before us some
vapor or an obscuring something thinned out or rose from the
surface of the water. "It looks like a floating-palace, with a lot of
dwarfish buildings floating behind it. That isn't part of the city itself."
"No; but a palace in all probability," Rhodes answered. "Certainly a
very large and imposing structure. That must be an island."
And an island it is.
At this moment Drorathusa moved to our side, and, indicating the
great building in question, many windows of which were a perfect
blaze of light, she said:
"Lathendra Lepraylya."
Her eyes lingered on Rhodes' face, and her look, I saw, was somber
and troubled.
So that was the queen's palace.
Soon we would be in the presence of this Lathendra (Queen)
Lepraylya.
What manner of woman was this sovereign of the Dromans?
What awaited us there?
I remembered that look of Drorathusa's, and I confess that my
thoughts were soon troubled and somber.
 Chapter 40
BEFORE LEPRAYLYA
One by one, in twos and threes and then in a body, the small craft
had dropped behind, and now we were alone on the black waters,
across which, from the shores and from many of the boats, came
quivering lines of light.
"It must be the eclipse," said Rhodes, "that has affected the
Dromans in this manner so remarkable. It is plain, Bill, that there is
something about this sudden darkness that is mysterious and awful
to these Hypogeans. It must be that it is in some way a most
extraordinary eclipse."
It was a most extraordinary eclipse, and there was something awful
about it—something more awful than we thought. And what troubled
me the most was this: they seemed to think that we men from the
World Above had something to do with this dread darkness—already
one of far longer duration than any eclipse any living Droman had
ever known. Indeed, none such had been recorded for what we
would call centuries, and the last had been the harbinger of the most
fearful calamities.
We knew full well that some superstition was pointing a fell finger in
our direction; but through the mind of neither flickered the thought
that this eclipse might so to speak, be metamorphosed into a death-
charge against us.
As we were drawing in to the palace, a heavy voice came across the
water. On the instant the rowers rested on their oars. Our
commander answered the hail, the heavy voice came again,
whereupon the oars were dipped and our craft glided in toward the
landing-place.
This hailing, by the way, was pure formality, for they on the island
knew who we were.
"What a scene!" said Milton Rhodes, his eyes shining. "What a
moment, old tillicum, is this for you and me! We shall never, in all
likelihood, know another such as this is!"
Like a great lovely water-bird, our boat swung in to the landing-place,
where she was at once made fast.
And then it was that another strange thing happened.
Rhodes and I stepped from the boat together. Since the light had
gone out in that fierce and terrible flash, not the faintest glimmer had
shone overhead, anywhere. But hardly had we set foot on the island
when there came a flash wrathful and awful.
For a few moments, for the flash seemed to travel along the roof for
many miles, the palace and the other buildings there, the people,
and there were two or three hundreds, the water, the city, the distant
walls of rock stood out in bold relief, as though in the glare of
leperous fire. Then utter darkness again. It was like, and yet,
strangely enough, very unlike too, a lightning-flash; but no thunder
roared, not the faintest sound was heard.
Again shot and quivered that leperous light.
And this time cries broke out, cries that fear and horror wrung from
the Dromans.
It was, indeed, an awful moment and an awful scene.
"It looks," said Milton, "as though they think that the world is coming
to an end."
"Certainly," I nodded, looking about me a little anxiously, "it seems
that they think just that. Look at Drorathusa!"
Again she was standing with arms extended upward, as we had
seen her at the mouth of the great cave, and once more that strange,
eerie voice of hers came sounding. Every one else there, save
Rhodes and myself and a little girl who was clinging to Drorathusa's
dress, was kneeling. Little wonder that, as I looked upon that scene,
with the leperous light flashing and shaking and quivering through
the darkness, I thought, for some moments, it must all be a dream.
The flashes became more frequent. The light began to turn
opalescent and to shoot and quiver and shake up along the roof.
Then of a sudden the eclipse—what other word is there to use?—
had passed and all was bright once more.
For some moments, there was silence, utter, resting on the place like
something tangible. Arose a murmur of gladness, and then a song,
started by Drorathusa herself, of thanksgiving. Every one, I believe,
joined in this anthem, or whatever it should be called, and the voices,
rising and falling, produced upon us twain from another world,
though we understood but a single word, an effect strange and
pronounced.
That single word which we understood was zur, which means light.
This word is remarkable not only as being a monosyllable—Drome,
of course, is another—in this language of polysyllables but also for a
resemblance that will be set forth by the following, which I take from
the writings of the great scientist Sir John Herschel:
"In a conversation held some years ago by the author of these pages
with his lamented friend, Dr. Hawtrey, Head-Master and late Provost
of Eton College, on the subject of Etymology, I happened to remark
that the syllable Ur or Or must have some very remote origin, having
found its way into many languages, conveying the sense of
something absolute, solemn, definite, fundamental, or of unknown
antiquity, as in the German words Ur-alt (primeval), Ur-satz (a
fundamental proposition), Ur-theil (a solemn judgment)—in the Latin
Oriri (to arise), Origo (the origin), Aurora (the dawn)—in the Greek
Opos (a boundary, a mountain, the extreme limit of our vision,
whence our horizon), Opaw (to see), Opoos (straight, just, right),
Opkos (an oath or solemn sanction), Opai (the seasons, the great
natural divisions of time), etc. 'You are right,' was his reply, 'it is the
oldest of all words; the first word ever recorded to have been
pronounced. It is the Hebrew for LIGHT ... AOR.'"
And there, down in Drome, is the word zur, and it means light.
Whence came that word zur into the Droman language? Its
semblance to ur or or or aor is unequivocal. Is that semblance a
mere coincidence? Or did these syllables have a common origin?
Of course, there is no answer forthcoming. In all likelihood, there
never will be an answer.
Periods of gloom are by no means a rarity in Drome, so lamps are
always kept in readiness, and no Droman would think of beginning a
journey into a dense forest without some kind of lamp, lantern or
torch. Gloom, then, they accept as a matter of course; but in utter
darkness their minds are a prey to fear and to something akin to
horror. Superstition is rampant in Drome, and some of the worst
species of it have their origin in these very eclipses. Among this
strange, and in some ways truly wonderful, people, there is an
astonishing mingling of good sense, a genuine love for some
branches of science, and a belief in omens, portents, prodigies and
other things of that kind, that would make your hair stand up on end.
Probably you will better understand that scene which I have just
described—that in the utter darkness—and better understand that
one which was so soon to follow when I say that one of their old
prophets, as it is recorded in their sacred writings, foretold a time
when the light is to go out to shine no more—a time when Drome is
to be in a darkness that will last forever and forever.
The song ended, Drorathusa came over and placed herself between
Rhodes and me; and then we quitted that landing-place, ascended a
short flight of steps, passed through a most beautiful court and then,
having ascended more steps, entered the palace itself.
Our little party was conducted straight to the throne-room.
And straight down the great central aisle we went and stood at last
before the queen herself.
And what were the thoughts of the queen as she saw before her
two men from another world?
 Chapter 41
A HUMAN RAPTOR
There is nothing, as we then saw, servile, debasing in Droman court
ceremonial. The meanest Droman, indeed, would never dream of
kneeling before his queen. A Droman kneels to no man or woman,
but to the Deity only.
The sovereign does not owe her queendom to birth, but to merit, or
to that which the Dromans deem as such. She is chosen, and she is
chosen queen for life, though, if she prove herself unfit for the
throne, the Dromans may remove her. I say she, and I mean she.
The Salic law excluded a woman from the throne of France; the Salic
law of Drome excludes a man; or, as the Dromans are wont to put it.
"No man may be queen." A proposition that even the most Socratical
Droman philosopher, and Drome has had many a one, has never
been known to dispute!
As to the choosing of the Droman sovereign, I should perhaps
explain that every one does not have a voice in this. Beggars,
prodigals, sociophagites, dunces, nincompoops, fuddle-caps, half-
wits, no-wit-at-alls, sharpers, crooks, bunko-men, bandits, thieves,
robbers, highwaymen, burglars, crack-pots, fools, madmen and
murderers, and some others, are all (I know that this is perfectly
incredible and awful, but I solemnly assure you that it is a fact)
interdicted the ballot.
Alas, it grieves me more than I could ever express to record so sad
an instance of benightment in a people in so many ways so truly
enlightened and broadminded. But I take pride in saying that, when I
had attained to something like a real knowledge of the Droman
tongue, I described to Lathendra Lepraylya herself, at the first
opportunity and in the most glowing and eulogistical language at my
command, though confining myself strictly to the truth, how
beautifully we did those things in the World Above.
I had (yes, I confess it) flattered myself that I would thus be
instrumental in bringing about a great reform, in righting a cruel
injustice. Vain vision, vain alluring dream! As I went on with my
panegyric, I saw wonder and amazement gathering in the beautiful
eyes of Lathendra Lepraylya. When I had finished, she sat for some
moments like one dumfounded. And, when at last she spoke, it was,
as old Rabelais has it, as though her tongue was walking on
crutches. What she said was:
"My Lord, Bill Carter!"
And again after a pause:
"My Lord, Bill Carter!"
At this point I noticed that Milton was smiling at me with great
apparent amusement.
"But, then," Lepraylya added, "it must be an allegory. I confess,
however, that the meaning, to my poor intellect at any rate, is
involved in the deepest obscurity. Yes, an allegory it must be. Surely
this world that you have described to me exists only in the
imagination; surely it is an imaginary world inhabited by imaginary
sane people that are in reality lunatics!"
But this is anticipating.
There we stood before Lathendra Lepraylya, the Queen of Drome.
And what a vision of loveliness was that upon which we stood
gazing! Strange, too, was the beauty of Lathendra Lepraylya, what
with her violet hair. Yes, I wrote violet, and I mean violet. (Her age I
put at about thirty.) The eyes were large and lustrous, were of the
lightest gray, the pallid color of them and the violet of her tresses
enhancing the weird loveliness of her.
With her right hand she held the scepter; one end of it rested upon
the dais, upon the other was a statuette—of Zeeleenoanthelda, the
half-historical, half-mythical first sovereign of Drome. Upon
Lepraylya's brow, in a bejeweled golden diadem, was a large
brilliance of pale green, flashing when she moved her head with
prismatic hues and fires.
But this woman before whom we stood was no mere beauty. That
one saw at the first glance. Wonderful, splendid, one felt, was the
mind of her, the soul of Lathendra Lepraylya.
And not only that, but it was as though there was something uncanny
in those pale gray eyes when she turned them to mine. That look of
Lepraylya's did not meet look; it seemed to go right into my very
brain, to search out its thoughts and its secret places.
At the time it seemed long, but I suppose that no more than a few
seconds passed before she turned her eyes to Milton Rhodes, upon
whom they seemed to linger.
And what were the thoughts of the queen as she saw before her two
men from another world?
We could, of course, only guess.
And here again had superstition and a prophet loaded those dice
upon a throw of which the fate of Milton Rhodes and myself
depended; for one of the prophets had foretold the coming of men
from another world—men who would be the harbingers of fearful
calamities for Drome.
The snowy face of the queen was cold, impassive. Even when she
slightly raised her right hand and the scepter to us in salutation, not
the slightest change was perceptible upon a single lineament.
The next moment, however, there was a change—when she
addressed Drorathusa. For each of the others of our little party
Lepraylya had a kind word, and then we all moved back a few steps
to the seats which had been reserved for us, all, that is, save
Drorathusa. She, we at once perceived, was about to give an
account of the journey up to the mysterious, the awful World Above.
There was not a vacant seat in all that great room, save one—that
for Drorathusa. This was a little to the left of the throne, as one faces
it, together with a dozen or so others, all occupied by persons whom
I at once, and rightly, set down as priests and priestesses.
Of this small group (small but very powerful) every member save one
was dressed in a robe of snowy white. As for the individual in
question, his robe was of the deepest purple, and he had round his
head a deep-blue fillet, in which was set a large gem, a diamond as
we afterwards learned, of a red so strange and somber that one
could not help thinking of blood and dreadful things.
We thought that this personage was the high priest, and in this we
were not mistaken. He was about sixty years of age, lean to
emaciation and with the cold, hard look of the fanatic in his eyes and,
indeed, in his every lineament. His face, smooth-shaven, as is the
Droman custom, was like that of some cruel bird of prey. Coldly he
received, and returned, the salutation of Drorathusa, and dark with
malevolence had been the look which he had fixed upon Rhodes
and me.
There could not be the slightest doubt that this human raptor
purposed to rend us beak and talon.
 Chapter 42
HE STRIKES
Drorathusa began her story. Lathendra Lepraylya leaned forward,
rested her chin on her left hand and listened with the most careful
attention. So still were the listeners that, as the saying has it, you
could, anywhere in that great hall, have heard a pin drop.
At times, so expressive were her gestures, Rhodes and I had no
difficulty whatever in following Drorathusa; but only at times. I have,
however, had access to a transcript of the stenographic record of her
story (the Dromans, despite the remarkable polysyllabic character of
their language, have most excellent tachygraphers) and I wish that
space would permit inclusion of it here.
When Drorathusa had finished, the queen, who had several times
interrupted with some interrogation, put a number of questions. With
two or three exceptions, the answers given by our Sibyl seemed to
be satisfactory. But those exceptions gave us something to think
about. It was obvious that the queen was troubled not a little by
those answers; and she was not, I believed, a woman who would
lightly suffer the mask to reveal her thoughts or her feelings.
When the queen had done, came the turn of that high priest, whose
name was Brendaldoombro. Up he rose and addressed a few words
to Lathendra Lepraylya. Her answer was laconic, accompanied by
an assenting motion of her right hand. For a few seconds her look
rested upon Milton Rhodes and me, and it was as though across
those strange, wondrous pale eyes of hers a shadow had fallen.
As for the high priest, he had instantly, and with a fierceness that he
could not bridle, turned to Drorathusa.
How Rhodes and I, as we sat there, wished that we could
understand the words being spoken!
"Always, O Drorathusa," said Brendaldoombro, "has your spirit been
strange and wayward. Always have you been a seeker after that
which is dark and mysterious. And, of a truth, dark and mysterious is
the evil which you have brought down upon Drome.
"Never content with what it is given us to know! Always seeking the
obscure, the concealed! Sometimes, I fear, even that which is
forbidden!"
At those words the eyes of Drorathusa flashed, but she made no
answer.
"Cursed was that hour—cursed, I say, be that peeking and searching
and peering that discovered it to your eyes, that record of those who,
led on by the powers of the Evil One, ventured up into the caves of
darkness and at last up into the World Above itself—a world, as our
holy writings tell us, of fearful and nameless things, of demons who,
to achieve their fell purpose"—here he fixed his vulture-eye upon
Milton and me—"assume the shapes of men.
"But you, O Drorathusa, must needs find that record, that writing
which never should have been written. And you must needs turn a
deaf ear to our words of counsel and admonition. But you must
needs beg and beseech and implore our permission to go yourself
up into those fearful places and there see with your own eyes
whether that in the writing was true or false. And we, alas, in an evil
hour and one of weakness—yes, we did yield to your importunities
and your wicked interpretation of our sacred writings, and we did
suffer you to go forth."
It seems, however, that just the opposite was the truth—that
Brendaldoombro, fearing the growing popularity and power of this
extraordinary woman, had been only too glad to see her start for the
caverns of darkness, from the black mysteries of which he, of
course, had hoped that neither she nor a single one of her
companions would ever return.
"Yes, evil was the hour in which you went forth, O Drorathusa the
Wayward One. And evil is this in which we see these demons in the
shapes of men sitting in our very midst, before the very throne of our
queen. Already has God shown His anger, shown it in this darkness
which has sent fear to the stoutest heart—this darkness the like of
which no living man has ever known in Drome.
"Nor," he went on, his voice rising, "will the Divine wrath be softened
so long as we, undutiful children that we are, suffer them to live—
these devils that have come amongst us in the forms of men!
Death!" his voice rising until the hall rang with the fierce tones.
"Death to them, I say! Let death be swift and sure! And thus will
Drome be spared sorrows, blood and miseries that, else, will wring
the heart of the babe newborn and cause it to rise up and fearfully
curse father and mother for bringing it into a world of such madness
and woe!"
The effect of this impassioned and fiendish outburst was
instantaneous and fearful. Something that was like a groan, a growl
and a roar filled that great room. One who has never heard it could
never believe that so strange and so frightful a sound could come
from human throats. The Dromans sprang to their feet—not men and
women now, but metamorphosed by the cunning and the diablerie of
Brendaldoombro into veritable fiends.
"We're in for it, Bill!" cried Milton, springing to his feet and whipping
out his revolver.
I sprang to his side, and we faced them.
Drorathusa, with a fierce cry, threw herself between us and the
crowd. We were moving slowly backward, back toward the throne.
The voice of our Sibyl rang out clear and full. A moment or two, and
it was evident that her words were quieting the mad passions of the
mob, for mob, at that moment, it certainly was, though composed of
the élite of the Droman world.
Then of a sudden, full, clear, ringing and aquiver with wrath and
suppressed passion, came the voice of Lathendra Lepraylya.
Oh, what a vision of fierce loveliness was she as she stood there!
Brendaldoombro had come within a hair's-breadth of achieving his
diabolical purpose. And a most ugly vision of thwarted evil was he at
that moment. He knew his auditors, though, and he knew his power.