SECTION 1
CHAPTER 1
Lucia Athanassaki
The chorus was a group of male, female, or male and female adults, adolescents, or children who sang and danced simultaneously in honor of the gods at periodic Panhellenic and local festivals or smaller cultic events.1 Choruses also celebrated in song and dance important moments and achievements of mortals, such as weddings, athletic victories, civic and religious appointments, and any other activity that a community or a family thought worth celebrating and/or commemorating. Even when choruses celebrated human achievements, however, gods enjoyed an equal, if not greater, share in the eulogy, because divine favor was considered a sine qua non for human success and poets were well aware of the divine wrath and punishment awaiting those who did not pay them proper tribute.2
Traditional songs were available for the wide range of cultic and social occasions, but the great number and variety of Panhellenic and local occasions in the metropolitan and colonial Greek world, the agonistic spirit, and the prosperity of Greek cities during the archaic and early classical period gave rise to a booming song culture that fostered great artistry, creativity, and innovation.3 The Panhellenic and high-profile local festivals were the venues where poets had the opportunity to display their talent and choruses their virtuosity. Like poets, choruses also traveled to Panhellenic and other major sanctuaries for theoric purposes,4 but these also had their own resident choruses, often female. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo offers a precious early testimony of such a chorus on Delos, the famous Deliades, who are also epigraphically attested.5
The gender and number of choreuts6 varied according to the occasion, the honorand, and in all likelihood the region. Apollo, for instance, was worshipped by male, female, and mixed choruses in Delphi, Athens, Delos, and elsewhere.7 Similarly, male choruses performed dithyrambs for Dionysus in Athens, whereas the god is frequently imagined as leading his female Bacchic choruses in Thebes and Delphi. Whereas Attic drama initially required 12 and later 15 choreuts for tragedy and 24 for comedy, the number of choreuts that performed on different occasions in different places must have varied greatly.8 Fifty seems to have been the usual high number, three the low number; divine choruses who were the models for human choruses ranged from fifty (Nereids) to three choreuts (Graces). Athenian dithyrambic choruses required fifty choreuts, but our early sources are not particularly enlightening concerning the number of choreuts that performed other genres, such as hymns, paeans, and partheneia. The young Spartan women who performed Alcman’s composition in Sparta, for instance, seem to give the number ten for the members of their chorus. Another famous performance in honor of Apollo on Delos, the song-dance of Theseus’ fourteen male and female companions, who imitated the hero’s movements in the Labyrinth, gives us the number fifteen for a mixed chorus of young men and women.9
The choral audio-spectacle, much admired in antiquity, is lost for us. As we shall see, however, we can reconstruct aspects of it thanks to self-referential choral statements in the texts that have survived. Epic and dramatic descriptions of choruses, sculptural and vase representations, and later accounts and treatises add substantial information on the nature and the appeal of choral performances.10
The Great Masters of the Archaic and Early Classical Periods
Countless traditional songs must have been sung and danced, and countless new song-dances must have been produced in the Greek cities over the centuries. Of this prolific output little has survived: names of great masters, titles of their songs, and a small number of their poems—mostly in fragments.
Probably all nine poets who were included in the Alexandrian canon of the nine lyric poets tried their hand at choral compositions. Alcman, who lived and composed in 7th-century cosmopolitan Sparta, became famous for his partheneia, choral compositions for female choruses (AP 9.184.9).11 In 1855 a papyrus found in a tomb in Saqqara by Auguste Mariette brought to light a precious song that Alcman composed for a Spartan female chorus. If we take into account the importance of female choruses in the religious and social life of the Greek polis, the surviving fragments are frustratingly few. I shall come back to song-dances for young women in the next section.
At the other side of the Aegean the most famous female poet of the ancient world, Sappho, probably composed songs for both solo and choral performances on Lesbos.12 In the next section I shall look at some evidence that depicts Sappho as a chorodidaskalos, i.e., chorus teacher/leader. The other famous Lesbian poet, Alcaeus, is mostly associated with compositions for the solo voice, but some scholars have suggested the possibility of compositions for choral performance in ritual contexts.13
According to the 10th-century ad dictionary Suda, Stesichorus was the first to set up a chorus to cithara-singing (Sud. Σ 1095 (iv 433 Adler)). This testimony together with the length of Stesichorus’ compositions gave rise to the view that Stesichorus was a citharode, but this view has been persuasively refuted.14 If the testimony claiming that Stesichorus was the first to set up a chorus has any authority, the reference must be to some Stesichorean choral innovation and its impact. In all likelihood he made his reputation leading his choruses first in Western Greek festivals and then in Spartan and Athenian festivals.15 Another Western Greek, Ibycus from Rhegium, also composed for choruses and drew his inspiration from Homer and the epic cycle.16 He spent time at the court of Polycrates on Samos and took part in the tyrant’s symposia which must have been the venue for his homoerotic songs, probably composed for a solo voice. Another famous poet associated with Polycrates was Anacreon from Teos. Anacreon is thought to have composed love songs for the symposium, but it is possible that some of his hymns were meant for choral execution. Moreover, it has been shown that he was perceived as a choral poet by the later Anacreontean tradition.17
Very few fragments survive of Simonides’ choral compositions, but as we shall see in the next section he became legendary for his fitness as a chorodidaskalos in his old age. The number of his victories in dithyrambic contests also became legendary: an epigram claims that he won fifty-six (XXVII Page). Some scholars have thought that this number too high, but it sounds right if we take into account the poet’s longevity and Panhellenic success.18
We are infinitely luckier with Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ choral compositions. Bacchylides’ poetry was essentially lost until a papyrus bought by E. A. Wallis Budge in Egypt reached the British Museum in 1896 and was edited by Kenyon a year later.19 In addition to epinicians, this papyrus preserved a number of dithyrambs, two in very good condition (c. 17 and 18). The best preserved corpus by far is Pindar’s epinicians. Some modern scholars have argued that epinicians were intended for solo performance. The scales have tipped in favor of chorality, a view that has ancient authority as well, but the heated controversy in the 1980s and the 1990s has shown that the texts alone can lead to diametrically opposing views.20 In any event our knowledge of Pindar’s prolific output and range shows that he composed mainly for choruses. We know that the Alexandrian edition of Pindar consisted of 17 books: 1 book of hymns, 1 book of paeans, 2 of dithyrambs, 2 of prosodia, 3 of partheneia, 2 of hyporchemes, 1 of encomia, 1 of threnoi, 4 books of epinicians.21
The distinction between choral and solo compositions is unquestionably important for the reconstruction of the occasion and the audio-spectacle, but their boundaries were fluid. We know that choral compositions were re-performed solo and that solo compositions re-performed chorally.22 There are also songs that conjure up different performance venues, such as sanctuaries and symposia, which indicate different performance modes.23 Moreover unforeseen circumstances and/or practical considerations might dictate a course of action at variance with the initial intention of a given composition.
Choruses, Chorus Leaders, Chorodidaskaloi, and Poets
Unlike the modern world’s specialization and professionalization, Greek poets composed the words, the melodies, and trained the choruses who were by and large amateurs drawn from the citizen body. Although our evidence is scant, it indicates that poets trained choruses at least in their own cities. We have seen that recent scholarship has entertained the possibility of Sappho as a choral poet. This view, which as we shall see has ancient authority, gains further support from the recently discovered fuller version of the Tithonus poem (fragment 58):
(several words missing) the violet-rich Muses’ fine gifts, children, (several words missing) the clear-voiced song-loving lyre: (several words missing) skin once was soft is withered now, (several words missing) hair has turned white which once was black, my heart has been weighed down, my knees, which once were swift to dance like young fawns, fail me. How often I lament these things. But what can you do? No being that is human can escape old age. For people used to think that Dawn with rosy arms (several words uncertain) Tithonus fine and young to the edges of the earth; yet still grey old age in time did seize him, though he had a deathless wife.24
The speaker talks to young people about the gifts of the Muses and a song-loving lyre, she complains about the marks old age has left on her complexion, her hair, her mood, and her agility. She can no longer dance like a young fawn, because her knees do not support her. Our speaker is clearly a choreut, in all likelihood female, who experiences problems because she is getting on in years. A number of scholars identify the speaker of this fragment with Sappho herself.25 If the identification is right, our speaker is Sappho in her role of chorodidaskalos, which she is no longer able adequately to fulfill, if we take the statement at face value, because of her old age.26
I suggest that Philostratus the Elder had this and other poems of Sappho in mind in his description of a painting featuring a choral performance in the precinct of Aphrodite (Imag. 2. 1, ὑμνήτριαι). For our purposes it makes little difference if Philostratus does not describe an actual painting, but reconstructs a rehearsal of a choral performance on the basis of his own contemporary experience, Sappho’s poetry, and possibly other sources.27
What Philostratus describes is a performance of young women in a sanctuary of Aphrodite. The chorus leader is skilled, beautiful, and still young, but a wrinkle heralds old age. The statue of Aphrodite is lifelike, too. At this point the speaker apostrophizes his readers, asking if they want to pour a libation of words on the altar, for the altar has already enough frankincense and cinnamon and myrrh, it has a fragrance of Sappho. Once again, the painter is praised for the vividness of the painting which enables the viewers to hear the young choreuts singing. One of them is off-tune. The chorodidaskalos frowns at her, claps her hands, and ably brings her back into tune. A description of the appearance of the young choreuts follows: they are barefoot, they wear close-fitting girdles and colorful garments, their chitons are loose so as to not constrict their movement. They are beautiful. Paris or any other judge would have a hard time to choose the best, because they rival one another in looks and “honeyed voice” (μελίφωνοι). The speaker hastens to add that this is Sappho’s expression. The envisaged hypothetical contest is not based on looks only, but on looks, movement, and voice. The emphasis on the sound is further strengthened by the assertion that Eros is playing along with them and producing harmonious notes by striking his bow. The description of the painting ends with the subject of the song-dance. The eroticized choreuts sing and dance the birth of the goddess of love. The Philostratean ekphrasis goes far beyond a vivid description of a choral performance. It is a successful attempt to reproduce the irresistible visual, aural, and olfactory appeal of choreia, Sappho-style. The Philostratean image of Sappho as a chorodidaskalos gains further support from an epigram in the Palatine Anthology (9.189) that depicts the poet as chorus leader (3–4) and to a reference in Aulus Gellius to choruses of boys and girls performing Sappho’s and Anacreon’s poetry.28
Sappho was not the only poet to express the frustration of the aging chorodidaskalos. Antigonus of Carystus (Mir. 23 [27] p. 8 Keller) quotes some lines from one of Alcman’s songs and asserts that the aging speaker who complains about his heavy knees that no longer support him is Alcman himself.29 In contrast to Sappho, however, who laments the inevitability of old age, Alcman expresses the wish that he were a bird:
No longer, honey-toned, strong-voiced (or holy-voiced) girls can my limbs carry me. If only, if only I were a cerylus, who flies along with the halcyons over the flower of the wave with resolute heart, strong (or holy) sea-blue bird.30
How seriously these statements are to be taken is unclear. It is possible that they are hyperbolic, meant to elicit compliments for the fitness of chorodidaskaloi past their prime.
An agonistic epigram usually dated to the Hellenistic period extolls the fitness of Simonides at the age of 80 and turns the image of the aging chorodidaskalos’ feebleness upside down (XXVIII Page):
Adeimantus was archon in Athens when the Antiochid tribe won the intricately-made tripod; one Aristides, son of Xenophilus, was choregos of the chorus of fifty men who had learned well; and for their training glory (κῦδος) came the way of Simonides, son of Leoprepes, at the age of eighty. (ὀγδωκονταέτει παιδὶ Λεωπρεπέος)
Simonides may have been an exception, of course, but his age was not perceived as a problem by the members of the Antiochid tribe, who trusted him to compose and train a chorus for a dithyrambic contest.31 The epigram offers us a valuable glimpse into choral training privileging the outcome: Simonides’ disciples are said to have learnt well.
In a charming epinician, the Fourteenth Olympian Ode, Pindar lets the male choreuts speak of their training (13–20):
O queen Aglaia, and you Euphrosyne, lover of song-dance, children of the mightiest of the gods, hear me now – and may you, Thalia, lover of song-dance, look with favour upon this lightly stepping revel-group that celebrates kindly fortune. For having practiced (ἐν μελέταις) I have come to sing of Asopichus in Lydian mode, since the land of the Minyae is victorious at Olympia because of you.32
The honorand Asopichus competed in the category of boys. The choreuts celebrating his victory were probably also boys of his age. They designate themselves as a komos, they draw attention to their light step and to the practice they have done in order to come and celebrate their friend’s Olympic victory.33 This charming song, a cross between a hymn and an epinician, conjures up the ancient sanctuary of the Charites in Orchomenos where the chorus of boys perform in the goddesses’ presence.34 Despite the reference to choral practice, it is worth noting that Pindar chose not to mention a chorodidaskalos in this instance.
In contrast, in the Sixth Olympian, an epinician for the Syracusan Hagesias, Pindar mentions Aeneas, a chorodidaskalos whom he compliments for his skills (87–91):
Now, Aeneas, urge your companions first to celebrate Hera the Maiden, and then to know if by our truthful words we escape the age-old taunt of “Boeotian pig,” for you are a true messenger, a message stick of the fair-haired Muses, a sweet mixing bowl of loudly ringing songs.
Space considerations do not allow a detailed account of several important issues raised by Pindar’s request to Aeneas, so I shall limit myself to the ancient scholiasts’ explanation:
For this Aeneas was the chorodidaskalos, whom Pindar used because he was weak-voiced and could not lead the choruses by himself in public, which most of the poets and especially those who had strong voices used to do when they participated in contests, teaching the choruses themselves. (Σ ad Olymp. 6. 148a)35
The scholiasts had no way to know if Pindar was weak-voiced nor do they cite their authority. They probably deduced this conclusion from Pindar’s compliment to Aeneas that he is a “mixing bowl of loud ringing songs” (γλυκὺς κρατὴρ ἀγαφθέγκτων ἀοιδᾶν). If there was any grain of truth in this contention, we would expect Pindar to address the chorodidaskaloi he used more often. As it happens, the request is extremely rare, if not unique.36 Besides, it is hard to believe that Pindar would have such success in the dithyrambic contests in Athens if he was unable to teach choruses. Delegation of chorodidaskalia must have been common practice for poets of Panhellenic stature. Poets in high demand must have traveled a lot, but even so it would be impossible to train all choruses in all cities which had commissioned song-dances.
Pindar must have trusted Aeneas whom he praises for being a faithful messenger, a message stick of the lovely-haired Muses. Turned on its head Pindar’s compliment reveals the anxiety that poets must have felt when they sent their songs to be performed under the supervision of people they did not know. This is why it is hard to imagine that poets like Pindar and Simonides would risk competition by proxy in prestigious contests. Simonides’ decision to train the Antiochid tribe at an advanced age shows that he was not prepared to delegate this task to somebody else and risk his success at a prestigious contest.37
Our evidence shows that more often than not the roles of chorodidaskalos and chorus leader (choragos) were distinct. In Athens, for instance, in the dithyrambic and dramatic contests the chorus leader was called the coryphaeus, whereas the term chorēgos was used of the producer of the show.38 Beyond Athens our evidence is scant. In Alcman’s Louvre partheneion the chorus leader is Hagesichora. In all likelihood she, her second in command Agido, and the other members of the parthenaic chorus were trained by Alcman. In the archaic period choral instruction had a pedagogical dimension that went far beyond preparation for a certain performance.39 The pedagogical dimension of choreia was later succinctly formulated by Plato’s: ὁ … ἀπαίδευτος ἀχόρευτος, “the uneducated man is one without choral training,” (Laws 654a).
Was Pindar the chorodidaskalos of the fragment 94b, the partheneion he composed for the Theban festival of Daphnephoria? The leader of the procession, which can be reconstructed to some extent thanks to Proclus’ testimony, was probably the boy Agasicles, the daphnēphoros, escorted by his father Pagondas. The chorus leader was female, perhaps Damaena, Pagondas’ daughter, according to Luigi Lehnus’ widely accepted reconstruction.40 Another female, Andaisistrota, is said to have trained either the chorus leader or some other female choreut (66–75):
Δαμαίνας π̣α[. .]ρ̣ . . […]ωι νῦν μοι ποδὶ
στείχων ἁγ̣έο·̣ […] [τ]ὶ̣ν γὰρ̣ ε̣[ὔ]φρων ἕ̣ψεται
πρώτα θυγάτηρ [ὁ]δοῦ
δάφνας εὐπετάλου σχεδ[ό]ν
βαίνοισα πεδίλο̣ις,
Ἀνδαισιστρότα ἃν ἐπά-
σκησ̣ε μήδεσ[ι.] . [.]τ̣[.]. . []
ἁ δ’ ἔρ[γμ]ασι̣ [– –
μυρίων ε[… … … .]α̣ις
ζευξα[υ υ–
of Damaena, stepping forth now with a … foot, lead the way for me, since the first to follow you on the way will be your kindly daughter, who beside the branch of leafy bay walks on sandals, whom Andaisistrota has trained in skills … and she, with works of innumerable and ( . . . ) having yoked.41
The text is too lacunose to allow certainty concerning the kind of training Andaisistrota offered, but the participle ζευξα[ (perhaps yoking the chariot of song?) as well as the immediate and broader context points to music and poetry. Before the text breaks off in another self-referential statement the chorus mentions nectar (μὴ νῦν νέκτα[ρ … … …]νας ἐ̣μᾶς, 76). Whatever the familial relations between the choreuts’ relations were, it looks as if Pindar offered a glimpse into choral education of young Theban girls by female teachers. The choreuts of Alcman’s Louvre partheneion mention a certain Aenesimbrota who could also have been a chorodidaskalos, but the diction is far more vague than in the Pindaric daphnēphorikon.42
What Alcman’s Louvre partheneion and Pindar’s daphnēphorikon have in common is the gender of the choreuts, for the occasions for which they were composed and consequently their contents are very different. Claude Calame’s reconstruction of the occasion of Alcman’s partheneion has stood the test of time despite challenges to it, i.e., a ritual celebration in song and dance of the transition of the choreuts to female maturity. Pindar’s partheneion, on the other hand, honors Apollo and the members of a prominent family whose male members are praised for their athletic victories, the care they take of foreigners (proxenia), and their devotion to justice (38–65), whereas the female members, some of which are taking part in the song-dance, are praised for their musical gifts.43
It is worth noting, however, that despite their different circumstances both choruses compare their singing to the enchanting singing of the Sirens. In Alcman’s partheneion it is Hagesichora who is compared with the Sirens (96–97). The text is frustratingly lacunose, but in what survives the chorus seem to say that Hagesichora cannot sing better than the Sirens, because they are goddesses, but she can sing as well as a mortal can. In the daphnēphorikon the Theban choreuts assert that with the accompaniment of auloi made of lotus they will imitate with their songs the Sirens’ boast (σειρῆ̣να δὲ κόμπον αὐλίσκ̣ων ὑπὸ λωτίνων μιμήσομ̣’ ἀοιδαῖς, 13–15) whose power is such that it silences the swift blasts of the West wind (Zephyrus) and “whenever with the strength of winter chilling Boreas rages swiftly over the sea … stirs up the blast …” (trans. Race). At this point our text becomes lacunose, but the Hesiodic intertext (fr. 27–28 M.-W) according to which the Sirens enchanted the winds (τοὺς ἀνέμους θέλγειν) indicates a similar boast. Like the song of the Sirens that can conquer the raging North wind, the song that the Theban choreuts are about to reenact in the here and now will prove comparably enchanting. The specification of the material of the auloi as lotus wood intensifies the Odyssean intertext of irresistible enchantment.44 Pindar was well aware of the irresistible power of song. In the Eighth Paean he sang of the wondrous artifact of Hephaestus and Athena, the Kēlēdones, whom the two gods decided to destroy, when they realized the effect their song had on mortals who, unable to resist them and depart, stayed and died in Delphi.45 The Odyssey offered a more viable model of handling enchantment, since Odysseus was able both to enjoy the intense pleasure of the performance of the Sirens and survive it.
In another fragment Alcman identifies the Muse with the Siren (ἁ Μῶσα κέκλαγ’ ἁ λίγηα Σηρήν, “the Muse cries out, that clear-voiced Siren,” 30 PMGF). Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi has drawn attention to Aelius Aristides’ reception of the identification and has offered a very attractive interpretation. We may first look at the interpretation of Aelius Aristides, who evidently had access either to the whole poem or to a substantial quotation (28.51):
And you hear the Spartan saying to himself and the choir:
The Muse cries out, that clear-voiced Siren.
… Add this point too, that the poet, having in the first place requested the Muse herself, so that he might become active under her influence, goes on to say as though he has changed his mind that the choir itself instead of the Muse has become what he says.
(trans. D. Campbell)
According to Peponi “the identification of the Muses with the Sirens is not random from the leading figure’s point of view. If he imagines the voice of the chorus as that of Sirens and in turn identifies these with the Muses, he can be considered as both attracted to and inspired by the chorus that he leads. Or, to put this another way, the poet/choral leader acts out a position that is at once active and passive. He is made to yearn for the voices he hears while drawing from them the power to compose and sing.”46
The choruses’ irresistible appeal to poets/chorodidaskaloi, proposed by this interpretation, underlies a number of Pindaric self-referential choral statements in which the speaker claims a special relationship with the Muses and other deities associated with music. In Pindar’s Fourth Paean, for instance, the male chorus of Ceans makes the following statement (21–24):
ἤτοι καὶ ἐγὼ σ[κόπ]ελον ναίων δια-
γινώσκομαι μὲν ἀρεταῖς ἀέθλων
Ἑλλανίσιν, γινώσκ[ο]μα̣[ι] δ̣ὲ καὶ
μοῖσαν παρέχων̣ ἅλις·
Truly, I too, who dwell on a rock am renowned for Hellenic excellence in games on the one hand and on the other I am also known for my abundant contribution to music.
William Race, who translates μοῖσαν as poetry, thinks that the “reference can be to the amount of poetry their [i.e., Cean athletes’) victories have occasioned or to the Cean poets Simonides and Bacchylides (whose first two odes celebrate Cean victors).”47 Whereas the expression is general enough to include the inspiration that Cean athletic victories offered to Simonides and Bacchylides, textual and contextual indications suggest that the reference cannot be so restrictive.
The μὲν-δὲ construction indicates that the chorus boasts of the athletic excellence of Ceans on the one hand and of their contribution to music on the other. What does the chorus’ contribution consist of? It consists of beautiful singing and dancing. Pindar has not supplied an indirect object of the participle παρέχων, but it is not hard to imagine the recipients: first and foremost the chorus sing and dance for Apollo. They also sing and dance for the human audience of the paean, but an important beneficiary of their musical talents is the composer of the paean, Pindar, who could be the chorodidaskalos.48 By making the chorus draw attention to their musical contribution, Pindar paid a compliment to the Cean performers of his paean, along the lines “You sing and dance splendidly! You inspire me.” The clever combination of an adverb denoting abundance (ἅλις) with an iterative present participle (παρέχων) and a direct object denoting the totality of music (μοῖσαν), namely words, melody, and dance, points to the countless occasions that Cean choruses performed in the past, and presumably would perform in the future. As we shall see in the next section, instruction of choruses has a divine paradigm. In teaching and leading choruses, poets enacted in the here and now the instruction gods offered mortal choreuts once upon a time, and shared in the pleasure mortals offered to the gods. Sometimes the pleasure was so intense that poets thought of their choruses as Sirens.
Singing and Dancing with and for the Gods
From Homer onward poets missed no opportunity to foreground their privileged relation with the Muse(s), but they were aware that choruses had also a privileged relation with the gods, since their participation in ritual celebrations was indispensable.49
We may first turn to Plato’s eloquent descriptions in the Laws. In 653e–654b the Athenian states that the gods appointed Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysus as the mortals’ fellow-celebrants and fellow-choreuts:
ΑΤΗΕΝΙΑΝ. Very good. Now these forms of education, which consist in right discipline in pleasures and pains, grow slack and weakened to a great extent in the course of men’s lives; so the gods, in pity for the human race thus born to misery, have ordained the feasts of thanksgiving as periods of respite from their troubles; and they have granted them as companions in their feasts the Muses and Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus, that they may at least set right again their modes of discipline by associating in their feasts (συνεορταστὰς) with gods. […] Now, whereas all other creatures are devoid of any perception of the various kinds of order and disorder in movement (which we term rhythm and harmony), to men the very gods, who were given, as we said, to be our fellows in the dance (τοὺς θεοὺς συγχορευτὰς), have granted the pleasurable perception of rhythm and harmony, whereby they cause us to move and lead our choruses (χορηγεῖν ἡμῶν), linking us one with another by means of songs and dances; and to the choruses they have given their name from the “cheer” implanted therein.50
It is worth noting that in the Laws the envisaged context of human and divine interaction is the festival. The designation of Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysus as fellow-choreuts (συγχορευταί), chorus-leaders (χορηγοί), and fellow-celebrants (συνεορτασταί) suggests that they are imagined as being present on these festive occasions, guiding the minds, the voices, the steps, and the actions of mortals. A little later in the Laws the Athenian will describe the performance of the three choruses before the whole city: the chorus of children led by the Muses, the chorus of those under 30 who will invoke and pray to Apollo Paean, and the chorus of those between 30 and 60 (664cd). It is worth noting that the interaction of human choruses with the gods, as envisaged by the Athenian in this instance, is unmediated by poets.51
One would be tempted to attribute the absence of poets to Plato’s hostility toward them, but the truth of the matter is that literary representations, prior to Plato, depict Apollo and Dionysus as leaders of human choruses and fellow-celebrants, and Plato may have had these in mind. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, for instance, concludes with precisely this image. First Apollo gives his Cretan priests a set of cultic instructions (490–501): to make an altar upon the beach, light fire upon it, and make an offering of white meal; next, to stand around the altar, which they must name Delphinius, and pray to the god as Apollo Delphinius; then the Cretan priests should dine beside their ship and pour an offering to the Olympian gods; once they have eaten, they should follow the god singing the hymn Ie Paean, until they reach the place where they shall be responsible for Apollo’s rich temple.
The Cretans followed the god’s instruction and when the time came Apollo arrived to lead the chorus to his sanctuary. Not surprisingly, under the musical guidance of Apollo, the chorus sing a paean (513–523):
Then they took their meal by the swift, black ship, and poured an offering to the blessed gods who dwell on Olympus. And when they had put away craving for drink and food, they started out with the lord Apollo, the son of Zeus, to lead them, holding a lyre in his hands, and playing sweetly as he stepped high and featly. So the Cretans followed him to Pytho, marching in time as they chanted the Ie Paean after the manner of the Cretan paean-singers and of those in whose hearts the heavenly Muse has put sweet-voiced song. With tireless feet they approached the ridge and straightway came to Parnassus and the lovely place where they were to dwell honoured by many men. There Apollo brought them and showed them his most holy sanctuary and rich temple.
(trans. Evelyn-White 1932)
This is the prototypical rite in honor of Apollo in which the god gives his future priests unmediated cultic and choral instructions. In Platonic terms he is a fellow-celebrant and a chorēgos.52
Dionysus and the Muses are also represented as fellow-celebrants and fellow-choreuts in pre-Platonic literary sources. Euripides’ Bacchae is the most extensive, but certainly not the only account of Dionysus’ depiction as a fellow-celebrant and chorēgos of female choruses.53 Similarly the Muses are also imagined as fellow-dancers. In the Second Stasimon of Euripides’ Heracles the chorus cast themselves as eternal choreuts who, despite their old age, still sing and dance and hope never to cease singing of the Muses who have made them dance (αἵ μ’ ἐχόρευσαν, 686). I have argued elsewhere that in this instance the expression χορεύω τινά should be interpreted in the light of the representation of the gods as fellow-choreuts in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the Laws.54 In other words the expression Μούσας αἵ μ’ ἐχόρευσαν can be translated as “the Muses who taught me to sing and dance.” This interpretation gains further support by the chorus’ immediately following parallelism of their song-dance in the here and now of the dramatic reality with the Deliades’ recurrent song-dance on Delos.55 This parallelism or “choral projection,” as Albert Henrichs labeled the tendency of tragic choruses, further enhances the Chorus’ claim to the divine origin and quality of their virtuosity.
These epic and dramatic representations of choral interaction of mortals and immortals conjure up an illud tempus when the world was taking shape, institutions were being established, and boundaries were being drawn: Apollo instructed his Cretan priests how to worship him in song-dance and cult; Dionysus was dancing with his maenads on Parnassus and elsewhere as his cult was spreading across the whole earth. The Theban elders reminisce how they were taught to sing and dance by the Muses at a remote time long before Heracles’ apotheosis. The difference between these representations and Plato’s version in the Laws is that there the Athenian projects the choral interaction of the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus with young and old choreuts to a future set in (fictional) Magnesia. This envisaged interaction in an imaginary city was not totally novel, however, but was rooted in religious belief and inspired by cultic practice. Festivals such as the Theoxenia where mortals were hosting the gods and choruses were singing and dancing in their honor evoked and reenacted the times when mortals enjoyed the company of the gods. Some of Pindar’s theoxenic songs have survived: the Third Olympian that conjures up the celebration of Theron’s Olympic victory at the Theoxenia of Dioscuri in Acragas, the Sixth Paean for the Delphic Theoxenia, and Dithyramb 75, evoking the xenismos of Dionysus in his small sanctuary in the Academy. In what follows we shall look briefly at the paean and the dithyramb.
Pindar’s Sixth Paean was composed for performance in the Delphic Theoxenia. The song-dance begins with the Chorus’ prayer to golden Pytho to welcome them along with the Charites and Aphrodite in this most holy time:
Πρὸς Ὀλυμπίου Διός σε, χρυ[σέ]α
κλυτόμαντι Πυθοῖ,
λίσσομαι Χαρίτεσ-
σίν τε καὶ σὺν Ἀφροδίται,
ἐν ζαθέωι με δέξαι χρόνωι
ἀοίδιμον Πιερίδων προφάταν.
(Pae. 6.1–6)
In the name of Olympian Zeus, I beseech you, golden Pytho famous for seers welcome me along with the Graces and Aphrodite in this holy time, the songful prophet of the Pierians.
(trans. Race modified)
In the light of the theoxenic occasion, I suggest that the arrival of the Charites and Aphrodite retains here its literal meaning as well.56 In other words the male chorus imagine that they arrive at a holy time, when divine guests, in this instance the Charites and Aphrodite, are also invited and expected. The simultaneous arrival and reception conjures up the image of choral interaction of Pindar’s male chorus with the Charites and Aphrodite. After a reference to the recurrent performances of Delphian priestesses and a lacuna of about 30 lines, the choreuts sing a brief praise of the Muses’ omniscience and ask them to hear their song (58). In the missing lines (19–49) the chorus sang of a divine strife, if we are to judge from l.50, “whence the immortals’ strife began…” The gods who were said to have quarreled were probably thought to be present in the Theoxenia, as were also the Muses, despite the absence of any indication other than the chorus’ request κλῦτε νῦν. Be that as it may, the nature of the festival leaves no doubt that the paeanic chorus performed for a mixed audience, human and divine, who gathered together at Delphi.
A dithyramb that Pindar composed for the Athenians begins with an invitation to the Olympians and come and join the chorus who are dancing for Dionysus (Dithyramb 4, fr. 75.1–19):
Come to the chorus, Olympians, and send over it glorious grace, you gods who are coming to the city’s crowded, incense-rich navel in holy Athens and to the glorious, richly adorned agora. Receive wreaths of plaited violets and the songs plucked in springtime, and look upon me with favor as I proceed from Zeus with splendor of songs secondly to that ivy-knowing god, whom we mortals call Bromios and Eriboas as we sing of the offspring of the highest of fathers and of Cadmeian women. Like a seer, I do not fail to notice the clear signs, when, as the chamber of the purple-robed Horai is opened, the nectar-bearing flowers bring in the sweet-smelling spring. Then, then, upon the immortal earth are cast the lovely tresses of violets, and roses are fitted to hair and voices of songs echo to the accompaniment of pipes and choruses come to Semele of the circling headband.
(trans. Race)
There is broad consensus that Pindar composed this song-dance for the Dionysia, but various reconstructions have been offered concerning the timing of this performance within the festival and its locale in Athens.57 The invitation of the gods to come and join the chorus suggests that Pindar may have had Dionysus’ xenismos in mind, which took place in the god’s small sanctuary in the Academy.58 Most scholars think of the great Dionysiac procession as the performance context, and specifically the altar of the twelve gods in the old Agora, whose location before the Persian wars, however, has now been suggested to be east of the Acropolis.59 It is possible that Pindar telescoped two different events and venues, i.e., the arrival and the xenismos of Dionysus in the Academy and the great procession that opened the festival in the Agora. Whether the chorus performed this song-dance at the sanctuary of Dionysus in the Academy, or in the old Agora, or even in the theater, Pindar conjured up a beautiful image where the Olympians were invited to join the mortal choreuts in song and dance in the most relaxing occasion, the spring festival in honor of Dionysus. As the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Pindar’s dithyramb offers yet another precious representation of mortals and immortals as united in choral dance and feasting as συγχορευταὶ and συνεορτασταί.
Epilogue
The preceding discussion focused on the great masters of the archaic and early classical period and their choral compositions for female and male choruses at the apogee of the song-dance culture. Choral activity does not of course die with Pindar. As Ewen Bowie has argued, choral activity remains a marker of Greek identity well into the Roman period.60 What survives however suggests that by the end of the fifth century Pindar’s compositions were already “silent” (according to Eupolis because of people’s indifference to beauty).61 The fractures through our scant and fragmentary evidence suggest that women had a more important role both as choreuts and chorodidaskaloi in the artistic and cultic life of the Greek cities than our surviving evidence allows us to establish. There must have been countless gifted women who, like Andaisistrota, trained young girls but only one, Sappho, made it to the canon of the nine lyric poets and was considered the tenth Muse. The various angles on the theme of the aging poet/chorodidaskalos must have reflected the anxiety professional poets felt at the prospect of reaching an age when they could no longer teach and lead choruses. It was not simply an anxiety at quitting a profession. We have seen that comparisons of the performance of female choruses with the irresistible appeal of the Sirens revealed the inspiration and the pleasure that the chorodidaskaloi derived from their interaction with choruses, and that inspiration and pleasure is something they would miss. In the archaic and early classical period choral instruction had a divine model, on the pedagogical significance of which Plato capitalized later. The Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus were believed to be the mortals’ fellow-choreuts and fellow-celebrants. This privileged relationship of human choruses with the gods had important implications for their cultic authority and musical virtuosity, for like the poets, choruses could also claim that their art had divine origin.
FURTHER READING
Claude Calame’s work on choruses is still the basic work of reference (2001). Mullen 1982 focuses on Pindar, but the first two chapters are of interest to students of choral performance in general. Stehle 1997 is a reading of poetry performed on communal occasions and at the symposium and is informed by gender and performance theory. Kowalzig 2007 is a demonstration of the importance of the choral performance of myth and ritual for the life of the polis, and its power to effect social change on the local and Panhellenic level. Athanassaki 2009b, an extensive part of which has been subsequently published in English in the form of updated articles, considers the art displayed in the Panhellenic centers as a visual “intertext” shared by poets, performers, and audiences, and it explores the inspiration it offered to poets and the poems’ subsequent commemorative and emotional impact on their audiences (Athanassaki 2009a, 2011, 2012a, 2012b, 2016a, 2016b). The collection of essays in Peponi 2013 gives the Laws center-stage and demonstrates its importance for the study of the Greek performance culture. Those interested in dithyrambic choruses should consult the essays in Kowalzig and Wilson 2013. Billings, Budelmann, and Macintosh 2013 examine the position of choral studies in classical scholarship and explore their reception by ancient and modern authors and the fascination they still exercise on thinkers and artists of different societies. Steiner’s extensive investigation of the representation of choruses in Greek culture (Steiner 2021b) came out when this chapter was already in production.
Notes
1 Greek has a variety of terms denoting festivals and festivities: agōn (ἀγών), heortē (ἑορτή), panēgyris (πανήγυρις), thalia (θαλία), aglaia (ἀγλαΐα), kōmos (κῶμος), etc.
2 See Athanassaki 2018b with references.
3 For the booming song culture in the archaic and classical period see Herington 1985. For traditional cult songs see Kowalzig 2007: 6–7. For the various types of song-dances see Weiss 2020: 162–164.
4 For theōria see Rutherford 2013.
5 Homeric Hymn to Apollo 156–164; for the Deliades see Calame 1997: 104–110; Clay 1989; Kowalzig 2007: 56–80; Peponi 2009; Nagy 2013. For the Hellenistic testimonies concerning the Deliades see Bruneau 1970: 35–38. Rutherford 2000 suggests that the Homeric hymn reflects choral practices which are attested by Hellenistic inscriptions.
6 The term “choreut” (χορευτής <χορός, χορεία in Greek) is preferable to the term dancer or singer, because it denotes simultaneous singing and dancing. Greek has special words for dancer (orchestēs) and singer (aoidos, hymnētēs, etc.). As a rule the chorus sang and danced in unison; Naerebout 2017 reiterates his conviction that choruses always sang and danced in unison. Other scholars opt for more open models. Lardinois 1996, for instance, envisages a choral performance that Sappho sings and plays the lyre while female choruses dance. Nagy 2013 also advocates a more open model.
7 See Calame 1997: 25–30 and 74–88.
8 Calame 1997: 19–25.
9 Plutarch, Theseus 21; see Calame 1997: 53–58.
10 For epic representations see Richardson 2011; for dramatic representations see Henrichs 1994/1995 and Swift 2010.
11 See Power (Chapter 17) in this volume.
12 See Lardinois (Chapter 18) in this volume.
13 See Nagy 2007 with references.
14 For convincing argumentation in favor of Stesichorus as a choral composer see in particular Burnett 1988, Cingano 1993, and Finglass 2017a. For an overview of arguments for and against choral execution of Stesichorean poetry and more broadly the state of Stesichorean studies see Finglass and Kelly 2015b: 1–17.
15 See Bowie 2015: 120–124.
16 See Campbell 1982: xvii–xviii; Hutchinson 2001: 234–235.
17 See Ladianou 2005, who argues persuasively for Anacreon’s reception as a choral poet by the Anacreontean tradition.
18 See Wilson 2000: 218.
19 See Budge 1920: 345–355. Kenyon’s editio princeps was published in 1897.
20 The arguments advanced in favor of choral vs. solo performance of Pindar’s epinicians are mutatis mutandis similar to those advanced about Sappho’s poetry, but to my knowledge there has not been so far a comparative assessment of the lines of argumentation used for the classification of melic poetry as choral or monodic.
21 See Race 1987.
22 See Cingano 2003.
23 Pindar’s Sixth Pythian, for instance, presents its performance as a procession to Apollo’s temple, but it also conjures up the symposium as a performance venue. I have labeled this rhetorical trope “mirrored performance settings”; see Athanassaki 2009a, 2012a for more examples.
24 The translation (with a slight modification in the last line) is taken from Obbink 2011.
25 See for instance Gronewald and Daniel 2004: 7 and Lardinois 2011b.
26 Even if the speaker here is not Sappho, fr. 58 offers us a precious glimpse into the frustration of the aging chorodidaskalos. See Power 2019: 93 who considers fr. 58 an example of parachorality: “but in the monodic fragment 58 choreia is treated as a figure of thought, a situational metaphor for the social and affective dynamics of Sappho’s group (or any analogous group), not to mention for the human condition itself ”; for the choral imagery see also Steiner 2021a: 83–87.
27 For Philostratus’ reception of Sappho see also Ladianou 2016 with references.
28 Aulus Gellius Noctae Atticae 19.9.4. See Yatromanolakis 2007: 84–85.
29 For the association of Sappho fr. 58 with Alcman 26 see Calame 1983: 474 and Lardinois 2011b.
30 Translation taken from Campbell.
31 For Simonides’ great success in Athens see Ieranò 2013: 376–377 and Athanassaki 2020.
32 My translation.
33 The ancient scholiast glosses it as ἐπιμελείαις (Σ Ol. 14 26a). The verb μελετῶ and the noun μελέτη are used for the practice of dancers (Plato Laws 813e), actors (Aristotle Problemata 901b), and orators (Plato Phaedrus 228b).
34 Σ Ol. 14 21d: θεασάμεναι τοῦτον τὸν χορὸν […] εὐκόλως χορεύοντα, ἀπὸ κοινοῦ, ἐπήκοοι γένεσθε. For the performance of this chorus at the sanctuary of the Orchomenian Charites see Athanassaki 2003, 2009b: 100–125 with references.
35 My translation. The same claim is repeated in scholium 149a.
36 The other person that could have been a chorodidaskalos is a certain Nicasippus in Isthmian 2. 47 about whom we know nothing other than Pindar’s request to deliver the poet’s message and song to Thrasybulus.
37 At the end of the fifth century Aristophanes entrusted the chorodidaskalia of several of his plays to Callistratus (see OCD s.v. Callistratus 1). Aristophanes’ reasons are unknown, but the increasing pressure of specialization may have played a role.
38 See Calame 1997: 43–49.
39 See Calame 1997: 221–244 for a discussion of the evidence.
40 Lehnus 1984.
41 The text and translation are taken from Race 1997.
42 For Aenesimbrota as chorodidaskalos see, e.g., Page 1951: 65–67.
43 For the gender dynamics in this song-dance see Stehle 1997: 93–99; for the social dynamics see Kurke 2007.
44 As Peponi 2012: 84 points out, Pindar adds here the musical accompaniment, i.e., the pipes, that is missing from the Odyssean account of the song of the Sirens.
45 See Rutherford 2001: 210–232 and Power 2011.
46 See Peponi 2012: 87.
47 See Race 1997: 261. Cf. Rutherford 2001: 282 who translates: “known also for providing the Muse in plenty.”
48 In the First Isthmian, 1–3, Pindar mentions a song he must compose for Delos, but presumably has not yet finished, because he gave priority to his epinician for the Theban Herodotus. Scholars have long thought that Pindar’s reference is to the late delivery of the Fourth Paean. See, e.g., Race 1997: 135; Rutherford 2001: 284–285. As Rutherford points out (ibid 292 with n. 48), the speaker envisages his choreia on Ceos, a statement that has led the ancient scholiast to posit a rehearsal on Ceos.
49 For a detailed discussion see Athanassaki 2018a.
50 The translation is that of Bury (1926, Loeb Classical Library) slightly modified.
51 Elsewhere in the Laws Plato mentions human intermediaries: see 656c and 816bd.
52 For Apollo as leader of the Cretan chorus see also Nagy 2009.
53 See for instance the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus 26, 9–10, which depicts Dionysus leading the choruses of nymphs who raised him to be honored with many hymns (πολύυμνος, 7).
54 See Athanassaki 2018a: 96–98.
55 The parallelism is achieved by the παιᾶνα μέν – παιᾶνας δέ construction in lines 687 and 691. See H. Parry 1965: 37 and Henrichs 1996.
56 For the metaphorical meaning see Rutherford 2001: 307 who suggests that “the inclusion of the Kharites and Aphrodite in the prayer identifies the register as one of sexuality and celebration: it is as if the χορός of young men (line 122) is a κῶμος arriving at Delphi.”
57 See Neer and Kurke 2014 with references to earlier scholarship.
58 Pausanias 1.29.2; Philostratus Lives of the Sophists p. 549. The xenismos of Dionysus as the performance context of this song-dance was advanced by Sourvinou-Inwood 2003: 95–96, who seems to be thinking of the Agora north of the Acropolis. Note that her book came out the same year as the publication of John Papadopoulos’ finds (Papadopoulos 2003) that offered definitive arguments for the location of the Ancient Agora to the East of the Acropolis before the Persian wars. Note also that the date of Pindar’s dithyramb is unknown.
59 For the location of the old Agora to the east of the Acropolis see Neer and Kurke 2014 with references.
60 Bowie 2006.
61 This is Eupolis’ verdict quoted by Athenaeus 1.2c–3a.